Carl von Clausewitz, Letter to Fichte, 1809
William F. Owen has published a noteworthy article in the Armed Forces Journal:
. . . Yes, the U.S. Army needs restructuring, but the demise of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 provided a far greater strategic justification for change — and still does — than fighting insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan ever could.
U.S. forces are drifting toward viewing counterinsurgency and war-fighting as distinct forms of activity. They are not. They are inextricably linked, in terms of equipment, training, doctrine and education. Thus the Victorian expression of “big wars and small wars.”
War is not changing. The aims and purpose of organized violence for political gain are enduring and unchanging. Insurgencies are war, and most if not all of the observations made in the Army’s new FM 3-24 “Counterinsurgency” manual could have been written in 1991 or earlier. Future wars will be born of future politics, not “globalization” or the Internet. Yes, there will be “unknown unknowns,” but they are just that: unknowable. New words won’t change that. . .
Language is basic, communication necessary. Propagandists will tell you that language is power.
The words we use do make a difference, words do have specific and concrete meanings, they are a basis of social communication, unless of course following Thucydides we are in political turmoil in which the inability to communicate with words reflects political chaos. In chaos, words that can be linked to interests take on these new meanings, subverting the old meanings, making everything in effect political, a matter of contention. Societies cannot withstand such conditions for long without suffering serious effects.
Prior to this quote, William Owen does a number on "hybrid warfare", another item in the current menagerie of pseudo-strategic notions and potions (N&S).
"Today, we no longer need strategic theory, such an outmoded concept" the N&S guys and gals say, "it's all about politics, which as everyone knows is a thing of the past. We no longer do politics. We just follow and applaud."
Ahhh, the marketplace of "strategy" which is so easy to find, just follow the most current jargon . . . and other loud noises. That being of course because we no longer do "strategy" in the meaning of how our government is organized and structured to do strategy, that according to Clausewitzian definitions . . . not since Cheney decided he wanted to do everything off the books . . .
"Counter-insurgency" is just a bad idea, at least until the Republicans try a coup or something. What's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan is aggression, not counter-insurgency. It's strictly counter-productive.
ReplyDeleteCharles: Our part is an aggressive attempt to wrest the political direction of the region (or at least the states we are engaged with) into a path we wish to send it in. Their part is something between intramural strife and civil war; the various local powers are struggling for primacy, and in many cases using us as foreign fighters for their faction. Thus the Maliki wing of the Shia factions gains control in Iraq, the Karzai wing of the Tajik/Northern Alliance (and yes, I know, Karzai is a Pashtun, but he is one that runs with the Tajiks and Hazaras, hence his acceptability for them) in Afghanistan. God only knows what the hell we're doing in Pakistan - I'm fairly confident that we don't.
ReplyDeleteI would observe that when the geopolitical leadership is confused, the military strategists are lost. We had a fairly cogent geopolitical plan from 1945-1991. Much of it was mistaken, and it got us into some idiotic foreign adventures, but it was at least coherent.
We have not really had any sort of sane policy review since the fall of the Soviet Union. We dicked around for ten years and then Osama hijacked our decision-making loop and has been leading us around by the...I'll be courteous and say "nose"...ever since.
The COINdinistas have merely seized on the past eight years of geopolitically moronic decisionmaking to grab the reins of military policy. What I fear is that without anyone driving the political bus, the military wheels will end up doing the steering, and if COIN is your tire of choice you're going to spend a lot of time off-roading in the shittier parts of the Third World.
Stupid, but, then, what else did you expect? We threw out the notion of "electing smart people" decades ago, if it ever was popular...
Charlie, it's been a long time, good to hear from you. But c'mon, Republicans starting a coup, Please. They can't organize anything that effective. And the Dems are just as guilty for any aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dems control both houses and the White house, and so what have they done to stop the wars? Well, there is a rumor of a draw down in Iraq, nice rumor, how many troops are there now? How much is it costing us? And how effective are they under the new SOFA? Yet, we are still there.... Oh, and there is the escalation of Afghanistan, not quite the direction I imagine that you were hoping for when you voted last year.
ReplyDeleteFDC,
My opinion, as perhaps a plank member of this generation of COINdinista, is that there is a chicken or the egg argument going on. Is there a movement to shift the military to COIN to push the country towards that policy as you imply, or is the policy (or lack there of) driving the military to move towards COIN (as you also imply)?
I didn't latch on to COIN because I wanted to, or because I always wanted read about Che, Mao and Sir Lawrence, I latched onto it because I was simply trying to ride the political winds, conduct the mission handed to me and keep my soldier alive. Sitting on a FOB in Iraq, I was watching my future and it was clear to me back in 2003, as it still is today, we will still be in Iraq and AF/PAK when I retire.
I think you have a strong point that the lack of a comprehensive foreign policy since 1992 is to blame. Since there is no coherent policy, I agree that our military (and other agencies) capabilities (or lack there of) have been steering our policy. But I don't believe the implied statement that people are pushing the military towards COIN just to grab the reins of military policy, they are doing it out of pragmatism.
I offer two options:
Door number 1: Correct me if I am wrong, but hasn't our foreign policy been "threat" based for the last century? Give the military leadership another threat, another mission, something else to focus their energies on, and they will shape the military towards that goal. Give them Iraq and AF/PAK, and they are forced to shape the military towards that goal. give the military a new threat or mission, otherwise, expect the reshaping of the military to deal with the implied threat (COIN).
Or door number 2, go back to the Pre-WWII days and hamstring the military to the point where it can't do anything at all, which will limit the decision makers' options towards a less "aggressive" direction. Take the car away from the alcoholic, and he won't wreck it.
bg-
ReplyDelete"hasn't our foreign policy been "threat" based for the last century?"
It was up until the end of the Cold War, when we could no longer justify defense budgets based on threats, since there really weren't any to justify the continued level of defense spending. "Capabilities" based defense planning has been in effect since around 1992.
I choose door nr. 2, get back to the pre-National Security State days and make do.
Given our current level of strategic confusion, we could do much worse. If you follow Mao, right now we are playing "Japan" circa 1938 to the Muslim world's "China" with ever rising levels of enmity and potential explosive political dynamics . . .
There is far too much money on the table for there *not* to be an enemy.
ReplyDeleteEverything else is noise about which enemy and who gets the the most money.
Charles-
ReplyDeleteSorry for not responding earlier . . . how are you doing?
Ael-
I would not disagree with you and think that the current state of strategic confusion has much to do with economic interests driving US policy, that is war seen as a continuation of profit making by other means. What is new here is that instead of the fruits/conquests of war being the goal, it seems that the continuation of war itself is the goal . . . which is beyond the capability of the US to sustain over the long haul. Not to mention the reaction of ever increasing enmity that these policies generate.
From a Maoist perspective, the Chinese peasant faced as he was with domestic feudal warlords, Western commercial interests and Japanese imperialism had no place to turn, everywhere he looked he saw only enemies hoping to capitalize on not only his own, but his country's misfortune. Class, racial, economic, and national enmities combined into a ever more powerful dynamic which cleared all foreign and class enemy elements from China in the end and brought about a great social revolution. From this perspective we don't really have any idea of the type of explosive potential the neo-con idiots are dealing with . . .
bg: I don't think I really have any sort of deep understanding of the WHY of the COINdinista Revolution. I suspect that there may be some True Believers (probably the bulk of whom coem from and reside in the SF/SOF community); theremay also be some opportunists and still others may be deep gamers. But the real point I was trying to make is:
ReplyDelete1. As seydlitz would point out, Clausewitz stressed the importance of having sound geopolitical or stratego-political objectives, and a clear understanding of the costs, gains and methods at hand before embarking on war. Especially since war has a way of skewing the original objectives, and the further from reality and sense those objectives are to begin with the worse off you'll be once the shooting starts, and
2. In the absence of sound political thinking - or the absence of any political thinking at all - the military goals supercede the political, and we become obsessed, as we are now, with the trivial metrics of tactical success. So the idea of "counterinsurgency", which presumes a huge concentration of political and social preconditions for success, becomes capable of being grafted onto any sort of "foreign internal defense" or intervention, regardless of the presence or lack of those very preconditions needed to make the entire COIN scheme work.
To me it doesn't matter why the people who are behind the notion of counterinsurgency as the New Military Black for the 21st Century. The only thing that matters is that when not rigorously thought through - and given what we've seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, the people who are and were pushing "COIN" in both places gave it the intellectual effort of a napping undergraduate student - COIN becomes a preplanned excuse for intervening militarily in the most craptacular portions of the Third World.
We COULD do that...but why? Do we really want to fritter away our human and fiscal resources trying to remake the tribal parts of the globe? What would it get us?
It is ever so convoluted to offer "answers", such as COIN, when the actual "question" has not been clearly and precisely stated. Thus, I suspect that what we are seeing, in very simplified terms, is the application of a "One Size Fits All" approach to foreign policy issues based, not on what is the best (and achievable) outcome for our national interests, but what is the tool de jour.
ReplyDeleteAl-
ReplyDeleteTrue, the answers are convoluted and mostly impractical since the question is never clearly stated. Which in my mind has much to do with the state of domestic US politics: we can't actually say what the reason for continuing the Afghan campaign is, since either the reason has to do with private interests or political manuevering, not to mention putting the whole continued rationale of the "war on terror" into question.
Our strategic confusion reflects our political confusion, just as the current Afghan regime reflects the character of the US regime which installed it.
I'll join the chorus in observing how good it is to see Charly making an appearance. Excellent, Charly.
ReplyDeleteClausewitz, er, Seydlitz, I have a hard time with your posts on Clausewitz, not because you're not firmly grounded, but because the old boy seems increasingly irrelevant in light of what passes for a US Government these days. To steal Gertrude Stein's famous line about Oakland, when it comes to our government, "there is no there there." Our government is a train wreck.
I suspect that if old man Bush had gotten a second term, we might have seen something resembling a "national security strategy," or "grand strategy," or whatever. Not that I was ever a fan of his, but he did kind of know his way around the block, plus he had some pretty smart folks around him. I think those guys would have come up with something. I would frankly be more comfortable with the Bush 1 national security crew, even including the pre-crazy Cheney, than I've been with any of the three succeeding presidential crews.
Clinton? Well, he started us on the downhill, on the preoccupation with, "It's the economy, stupid," and we've never recovered. The only thing I can think of that Clinton did to try to put together a national security strategy was the commendable cooperative program with Russia to get a handle on that unfortunate country's nukes. My work at the time put me in contact with some of the smart folk doing this, and everything I saw was favorable. Predictably, of course, that effort died under Bush 2.
Now, I happen to be one of those who think that what might charitably be termed a SWA, or Iraq/AfPak "strategy" was absolutely butchered by the Bush Administration, aided immensely by the, call a spade a spade, chicanery and stupidity of the US military.
When it comes to Afghanistan, Obama is now in a box of his own making (after his campaign pledge and his rash embrace of this "essential" war in March '09). He's got what appear to be disloyal generals pressing for a massive troop buildup, supported by an extremely disloyal opposition party waiting to pounce on him if he doesn't give the generals everything they want. In fairness to Obama, I suspect that he absolutely could not conceive of just how badly BushCo and the military had fucked things up in that part of the world. Put yourself in his place. You're running for the presidency, the most awesome office in the world. Even though you know your predecessor is a donkey, it's quite a stretch to imagine that ANYONE who EVER occupied that office would turn out to be so worthless, so guilty of such gross dereliction of duty.
It's clear Obama doesn't like this national security shit. He's a downhome domestic dude, not a warrior. Clinton the same way. Bush is just a sleazy politician, perpetually campaigning, a man who doesn't even get the concept of "presiding" over anything. He is a bully, with his concept of national strategy being limited to kicking the shit out of foreign devils.
We have to hope Obama can overcome his distaste for national security and start kicking some ass in the national security establishment. The first thing he should do is fire a few generals and cut the COINdinistas off at the knees. The most striking thing about this whole COINdinista establishment—military, congressional, pundits, gadflies—is just how self-interested they all are. They don't seem to give much of a shit about OUR nation and OUR economy and OUR military. There's something else that needs to be understood about the COINdinistas: their leading lights are right-wing journalists and former junior officers. They have no concept of national strategy and their tactical approach is a tautology: "Pop-centric COIN will work in Afghanistan because pop-centric COIN will work in Afghanistan.
Old term that needs to be dusted off for these COIN lovers: "Bah, humbug." They're snake oil salesmen, peddling their nostrums because they do not want to see a U.S. at peace. I hope Obama sees through them.
Publius: and the other consequence of handing the reins of military strategy to people who think like company commanders is the narrowing of military understanding - what there is of it - to what they have done in the places they have done it.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I've never understood about the COINdinistas is their almost religious belief in their tautology despite being almost completely unable to present a valid case for it.
Post-1945 campaigns to suppress rebellions have been almost completely unsuccessful when conducted by a foreign power, even when that power was the former colonial power. So you have France failing in Vietnam and losing politically (though fighting to a draw militarily) in Algeria, Britain failing in all of Africa and Palestine, the Portugese failing in Angola, the Belgians in the Congo, the Russians in Afghanistan, the Israelis in the Occupied Territories.
The old ways still work, of course, and the Russians showed in Chechnya; if you make a wasteland and call it peace, you can still "win".
But the only real success these fuckers can scramble up is Malaya, which is utter rubbish. When you have to invoke a situation where a) the occupying power admitted "defeat" before beginning - that is, by publicizing the liberation of Malaya at the beginning of the war and thus taking 99% of patriotic Malays out of the fight, and b) where your guerillas were a band of ethnic outsiders led at the moron level you're pretty much blowing smoke.
I despise their motivations - if they want a genuine American empire in the hinterlands of Asia they should be man enough to come out and say it - but even greater is my contempt for their ignorance. Their version of COIN requires an extremely restrictive set of conditions for success, none or few of which are present in our present conflicts.
Humbug, indeed.
Publius-
ReplyDelete"because the old boy seems increasingly irrelevant in light of what passes for a US Government these days."
All soooo true, which is my point. Clausewitzian concepts and the strategic institutional structures which are based on them provide only a cover for what is actually going on behind the scenes . . . the result that we see indicates profound strategic dysfunction which in turn indicates political dysfunction. Clausewitz provides the contrast, to show how far we have in fact wavered . . . not to mention to also point out that our foreign adversaries are acting along Clausewitzian lines to good effect.
So Clausewitz and strategic theory provide the "language" in order to form "a broad, sound view of war", but not act as a cookbook in what to do in every case.
As a veteran, I also feel the obligation to speak out, like yourself, and my contribution is to attack what I see as a cynical opportunistic betrayal of the country, but in strategic theory terms. Being a theorist, this is my own small contribution to the resistance, that most of us here feel compelled to do.
Does it make a difference, is it worth the effort, is anyone among "the powers that be" listening? No idea, but 20 years from now when my grandkids ask me where I stood during the Great Confusion, I'll be able to say that everyone who knew me or of me knew exactly where I stood.
Hey all,
ReplyDeleteSorry for my absence in other threads of late.
Mr. Owen is the real deal. He's a regular contributor in a forum I participate in over at small wars journal (council.smallwarsjournal.com) and he frequently breathes some well-needed skepticism on a lot of the "new" ideas being bandied about.
I think it's important not to paint the Coindinista's with too broad a brush. There are certainly the dogmatic priests (Nagl), but there are also many who support it because they saw it work for them in solving their tactical and operational problems. I know it has been said many times, but COIN is tactics, not strategy.
Personally, I'm not so sure that we Americans lack the capacity to do strategy - I think what we lack in consensus. We don't have concensus on most of the big issues of the day and we don't have concensus on what our role our country should have in the world. So we muddle along, mostly through inertia. Hard to develop strategy when you have no idea where you're going.
Andy: I'd say, rather, that COIN is a philosophy with tactics attached. It presumes that a set of counterguerilla tactics can knock down the violence level of an insurrection. It then assumes that the "legitimate" government can rush into the newly-"pacified" terrain and perform whatever magic it does to absorb the loyalties of the population.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with this is that whether you call it tactics, or strategy, or philosophy, it depends on a number of social and political things, many of them either impractical or unlikely and all of them impervious to the military actions.
It assumes that the reasons that the insurrection started were illegitimate, and that the existing government simply needs help fighting off the "foreign fighters".
It assumes that the population is relatively coherent, and that the government is viewed as an extension of the goals and ideals of the vast bulk of the people.
It assumes that the violence needed to suppress the insurrection will be less damaging to the society than the insurrection itself.
In practice, none of these had proved consistently true, or even true in the majority of COIN situations. Instead counterinsurgencies often leave the polities riven, or ungovernable, for generations. Algeria is still fucked. Kenya still suffers from the aftereffects of the Mau-mau. Iraq is a disaster in the process, and Afghanistan is what it is today to a great extent because of what happened from 1980-1989.
And our association with and massive support of Israel makes it somewhere between unlikely and impossible that any government we support in the Middle East will be seen as legitimate by the mass of its people. So the ideal combination for COIN - out military fighting in support of a government that both we and the local people like - has about a 4% chance of ever occurring. Note that both the Karzai and the Maliki regimes are highly unlikely to govern in ways that will materially assist the U.S.'s current long-term geopolitical objectives in the region.
A nation can be governed two ways: through overwhelming cooperation or through overwhelming force. The COINdinistas are saying, in effect, that we can use minimal force to coerce that cooperation. This is nonsense. In the absence of a massively brutal local government or a exceptionally brutal and stupid insurrection this just won't and can't work.
What happened in Iraq was a fortunate combination of clever politics (buying out the local guerillas, most of whom were fighting for local profit or power rather than as true ideological or regional rejectionists) and the mistakes of the ideological jihadis. AND by kicking several truly explosive cans down the road, where they may still explode in civil war. If the local commanders you mention thought that they were actually performing the sort of COIN that is currently being advocated by people like Nagl and the Kagans, they're just wrong.
The problem here isn't so much that the U.S. can't do strategy. I think the bulk of the American people have a very visceral understanding of what would work; powerful naval and air forces defending the physical US territories, a network of spies and satellites monitoring the hinterlands of the earth to keep and eye on the small groups with bad intents. Another network of regional allies to assist with punitive interventions when needed. And end to the mindless support of Israel and regional dictators that foment trouble with their own and neighboring polities.
The problem is that there is a vocal minority that insists we do THEIR strategy of intervention and military support for local satraps, even though empirical evidence suggests that their approach has been counterproductive to date. The COINdinistas are either deliberately or foolishly playing into the hands of these people
Chief,
ReplyDeleteIn essence you've made my point. There is a lot of debate in the so-called "COIN" community about what insurgency is and isn't and about the various methods to end insurgencies ranging from better governance and accomodation all the way to violent suppression. The interpretation you've given is but one position among many. It is, however, a position the right wing, neocons and a lot of the "surge" true believers hold dear. Most of those I know who've actually practiced COIN and/or studied it extensively (ie. Col. Lang and many of the people on forums I participate in) don't make any of the assumptions you list, particularly your first one.
On the understanding of the American people, I would like to see some evidence that the bulk subscribe to what you claim they subscribe too.
Chief,
ReplyDeleteWhere I concur with your overall point, that our nation lacks anything that resembles a true strategy, and that the COIN philosophy is filling the gaps in policy (gaps being an understatement), I think your perception of those who push COIN is simply oversimplified and to be a redundant, a gross over-exaggeration. Most of those who push COIN generally are looking for a way to meet short term, pragmatic military goals, nothing more.
"Algeria is still fucked. Kenya still suffers from the aftereffects of the Mau-mau. Iraq is a disaster in the process, and Afghanistan is what it is today to a great extent because of what happened from 1980-1989."
Having been to three of the four above, here is my take. Nope, I disagree that the COIN efforts in each country has defined the nations today. What defines the nations are the people of that nation, and not the actions of the foreign occupiers. The leaders of those nations may use their trauma as an excuse to gain and maintain power, but that is the peoples' choice. (yes, this assumes that people of these nations have have the culture or ability to effect their rulers)
Algeria is filled with Islamic nut jobs. I suppose you can argue that is a direct result of the opposition to the French, but I am not buying it. Kenya is a mess not because of the British, but because the tribal factions in their politics, the worst corruption in Africa (only 2nd to Nigeria who has their own problems) and an incredibly fractured society. A society where a large fraction of the wealth is held by people who have no political standing because they are not tribal, black men. Afghanistan is little different from it how it has been over the past two thousand years, occupiers and their putting down of rebellions are just leaves blowing in the winds of time in Afghanistan. Religion, tribalism and the lack of effective farming techniques are among the various reasons Afghanistan is the mess it is. Iraq, well, that place sucks. Yep, we helped set that place on fire, but not through any COIN efforts, but by the simple action of removing the only self-limiting agent in Iraq, and that was Saddam's controlling but brutal regime. Our bad, better the devil we know than the devil we don't, I suppose.
What most COIN practitioners will tell you is that is all depends on the people. And that is really what the practical users of COIN are pushing, that is isn't about miracle weapons of devastation or high technology, which was the prevailing military strategy of the cold war, but instead it is about people. Just like the enemy has a vote, the people have a vote. That is the main theme of the COIN movement, if you can call even call it that.
Bg: "What most COIN practitioners will tell you is that is (sic) all depends on the people.
ReplyDeleteAh, there's the rub. Bg, you do realize that COIN depends on not only the people of the client state, but on the American people as well, don't you? Hope you do understand that, because if you don't, I'm afraid you're setting yourself up for a great deal of disappointment.
In order to get my support, here's what the COIN snake oil salesmen have to do to convince me that a particular endeavor makes sense for the U.S. First, the "people" in whatever client state they've selected for their grand experiment need to be worthy. Yes, worthy. You betcha I'm going to demand a lot of the indigenous folk if I'm going to support shedding American blood and spending American treasure. You betcha. Get back to me when you find those worthy folk, Bg.
Next, the COINdinistas have to come up with some sort of great sales job to convince the American people that "staying the course" and paying the price in blood and treasure for years and years and years in Afghanistan or Bumfuck wherever is worth it. Hate to say it, Bg, but I think our political and military fuckups in Vietnam (meaning LBJ, RMN, the JCS, Westmoreland, et al down to guys like me who were there) and you boys' political and military fuckups in Iraq and Afghanistan (you can fill in the blanks there) have kind of poisoned the well for the wonderful military adventures you favor now. Brutal reality is that after all of our previous fuckups, we can't afford to indulge any more fuckups. I'd say you boys already got eight years in Afghanistan. Couldn't solve it? Sorry. Time's up.
Fact is, Bg, our government and your military leadership has just flat screwed the pooch for the past eight years. Given the real world economic crisis in our own country, I don't see why you would ever expect the American people to give you more rope. Check the unemployment rate in America and tell me why the American people should support giving Stan McChrystal what he wants. I don't think he should get it and I've so advised the president.
Incidentally, Bg, neither I nor many other retired officers agree with you in ascribing pure motives to those beating the drums for deeper involvement in local wars through so-called COIN. Many of us do not trust them and do not accept their so-called expertise.
Publius,
ReplyDeleteI'll let Bg speak for himself, but I think you are confusing explanation with advocacy.
"I disagree that the COIN efforts in each country has defined the nations today. What defines the nations are the people of that nation, and not the actions of the foreign occupiers."
ReplyDeleteThe real problem is that when you make war on a people (which is what civil wars are) it's hard to tell where the effects of the war stop and the effects of the national character start. A lot of the dysfunctions of the American South comes from the ways the societies there grew. But a lot of them are the result of the distortions forced on those societies by slavery and then by the Civil War. Likewise Algeria, Vietnam, Ireland, Sri Lanka...are there more Islamic nutjobs in Algeria than in Syria because of the civil war and the bloody work of the French? Is there any reason to assume that things would be WORSE if the French had just up and left, as they did in Benin or Lebanon?
Why do you think those tribal divisions are as bad as they are in Kenya and Nigeria? Could it be because the colonial power found it useful to divide the natives to rule them? Colonial rule did a hell of a lot to fuck up these societies, to the point where it becomes hard to tell the difference between the fuckup of anticolonial war and the fuckup of colonialism.
"Most of those who push COIN generally are looking for a way to meet short term, pragmatic military goals, nothing more."
The best way to meet the short term pragmatic military goals of someone else's civil war is to stay the fuck out of it. Would we have appreciated the Brits or French horning into ours? No. MOST of those who push COIN see it as a way of intervening in other place's internal fights to try and bend them to our will. You notice that where we have no dog in the fight, like Sri Lanka, the "terrorists" can kill to bloody forever and we could give a shit. The bulk of the COIN propaganda we're hearing now is to justify our adventures in the Middle East. You notice that no one is talking about Nigeria, or Mexico, although those states are nowhere near as cohesive as Saddam's Iraq was before we fucked it up.
If the people pushing COIN were reall "all about the people", they'd be willing to let the Talibs have Afghanistan back if that was the "will of the people", they'd have let the North Viets have the RVN...
Nope, it was and is all about the power and the glory.
bg-
ReplyDelete"A way to meet short-term, pragmatic military goals"
I think that's been the problem in a nutshell since 2001. What passes for our strategy has been a series of adhoc tactical fixes - heavy with a domestic US psyops element - in support of two very dubious wars which we dare not admit are both strategic defeats.
Overthrowing the Taliban government never really made a lot of sense since the original goal was to get OBL with the secondary goal of whipping out AQ in Afghanistan which was an allied force to the Taliban. The Taliban government, for all its negative points, had accomplished two very important goals. They controlled most of the country and had imposed their own "legitimate monopoly of violence" on their area and they were the furthest along in getting opium poppy cultivation under control. Overthrowing the Taliban government destroyed both these significant accomplishments and replaced it with a new ruling clique that we knew was corrupt, since they were essentially (minus Karzai) the same bunch the Russians and Indians had been supporting before.
Overthrowing the Taliban however also created a precedent, which was perhaps the real reason for doing so - it paved the way for the overthrow of Saddam in Iraq.
Iraq has also turned out into a disaster, in spite of all the happy noise about "surging to victory". Consider that we have essentially destroyed the Iraqi middle class, sent millions into exile, laid waste to whole cities, have sent the status of women and Christians in Iraq back generations. In fact, the Christians in Iraq survived the Mongols, but may not survive George Bush's war. . .
Iran is the big winner in Iraq - strategically they are in the driver's seat, whereas we have tarished our own image perhaps beyond repair.
COIN could be a respectable military doctrine, however concerning Afghanistan and Iraq it is hopelessly contaminated by both a deceptive and incoherent series of strategic decisions . . . the military instrument in both cases cannot compensate for the absence of a workable strategic purpose and the stated goals of "establishing stable (democratic) states" is not achieveable through our military means.
The tactics must fit the war, you can't simply assume that the war will fit the tactics.
Get ready for the next war: Yemen
ReplyDeleteI think you misunderstand Wilf.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't argue so much against or about COIN.
He argued against a culture of buzzwords.
His interest is in an almost empiric study of warfare and he's simply pissed off by the competence-free blabbering with buzzwords that you encounter if you research military theory.
The buzzword language is inaccurate and therefore perverted. Buzzwords are being use to mislead and to excuse incompetence.
Something goes awry?
'Not our fault, the human terrain here is complex and the war around us is transforming.'
Sven-
ReplyDeleteOwen writes,
"Yes, the U.S. Army needs restructuring, but the demise of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 provided a far greater strategic justification for change — and still does — than fighting insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan ever could.
U.S. forces are drifting toward viewing counterinsurgency and war-fighting as distinct forms of activity. They are not. They are inextricably linked, in terms of equipment, training, doctrine and education. Thus the Victorian expression of “big wars and small wars.”
War is not changing. The aims and purpose of organized violence for political gain are enduring and unchanging. Insurgencies are war, and most if not all of the observations made in the Army’s new FM 3-24 “Counterinsurgency” manual could have been written in 1991 or earlier. Future wars will be born of future politics, not “globalization” or the Internet. Yes, there will be “unknown unknowns,” but they are just that: unknowable. New words won’t change that."
So, I think you are mistaken on Owen's position, he does in fact go after COIN, at least in how it is being "packaged and sold" presently.
I suppose a disclaimer is in order. Wilf is a "mate" of mine, we both participated in the Chicagoboyz Clausewitz Roundtable and have been in email contact on and off since. He is an orthodox Clausewitzian strategic theorist (maybe even MORE orthodox than I am, if that is possible). He's read this blog and I have invited him to participate on this thread.
I thinl wht goes to the heart of what irks me about the COINdinistas is summed up in seydlitz' comment: "COIN could be a respectable military doctrine."
ReplyDeleteCounterinsurgency IS a military skill set - call it a doctrine if you will - that has been employed in one fashion or another since before the Romans. It's good old fashioned rebellion-suppression, and it comes in different flavors from the Roman (kill 'em all and let Jupiter sort 'em out) to the British (try NOY to kill 'em all unless we absolutely HAVE to...).
The critical difference between the COIN as practiced by Marcus Licinius Crassus or General Lord Cornwallis and that proposed for LTG Odierno is that the former two were first-parties to the war. It was their "country" that was threatened and their own subjects that were in rebellion. Our troops are not even in the position of the Hessian mercenaries of 1781, hired soldiers of the formal ruler of the American colonies; imagine instead that George allied with the Tsarina of Russia and Catherine's peasant soldiers and Cossack cavalry arrived in New Jersey to help put down those damned rebels?
Can you imagine some Don Cossack hetman trying to figure out who the "bad guys" were among the contentious rabble babbling some unintelligible language at him in the streets of Trenton?
Yep. You'd just kill whoever looked sideways at you and arrest the others.
The single, fatal flaw in the COINdinistas' ideas, even as tactic, is the notion that this rebellion suppression can be done effectively and throughly by foreign troops.
Add to that the political incompetence of the U.S. government and the impatience and stupidity of the U.S. public and you have epic fail.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAel: Exum is doing what he always does; "let's you and him fight."
ReplyDeleteAside from the fact that Yemen has never been "stable" - does no one remember the British campaigns there in the 50's and 60's (http://www.history.ac.uk/resources/e-journal-international-history/mawby-paper)? - the instability of the Yemenis should be troublesome only to their neighbors.
The only reasons to be concerned here are 1) petroleum and 2) Israel. I've spoken before about how our confusion between Israel's welfare and our own is politically moronic and strategically ruinous. And petroleum is a finite and diminishing quantity. If we were to take the money and ingenuity we waste on killing bazaar ruffians in and around the Arabian peninsula and spent it developing the post-petroleum era technology it would be much better spent.
FDChief-
ReplyDelete"The single, fatal flaw in the COINdinistas' ideas, even as tactic, is the notion that this rebellion suppression can be done effectively and throughly by foreign troops."
Agree, which is what I meant by "our military means". As the outside party we cannot impose a political solution on either Afghanistan or Iraq. In the end the locals will outlast us and implement what they "want" (defined in terms of power or degree of popular support).
seydlitz: "In the end the locals will...implement what they want"...and the flaw with the notion of foreign-troop COIN is that by suppressing the rebellion against the local satrap we will produce a satrap that will carry out our will.
ReplyDeleteImagine if Rochambeau had helped suppress the Whiskey Rebellion. Do you imagine that it would have prevented the naval quasi-war with France seven years later?
Utter humbug.
Chief,
ReplyDeleteThe best way to meet the short term pragmatic military goals of someone else's civil war is to stay the fuck out of it.
Yes, but the military doesn't have much choice. Many of the COIN proponents you deride are people who were forced to deal with fuckups at the strategic/policy level and found COIN methods successful. This is why I think you are painting with way too broad a brush.
MOST of those who push COIN see it as a way of intervening in other place's internal fights to try and bend them to our will.
Evidence for "most?" And the second part doesn't make any sense. Iraq and Afghanistan were never intended as COIN conflicts. The COINdinista's didn't come around until well after both interventions. COIN was never used as a justification for those interventions.
You notice that no one is talking about Nigeria, or Mexico, although those states are nowhere near as cohesive as Saddam's Iraq was before we fucked it up.
You are wrong on both counts. We've been involved in Nigeria's insurgency since at least the Clinton administration and we are, IIRC, spending over a billion annually for COIN and security training and assistance to Mexico. We actually have always done a lot of COIN around the world but it's usually limited to support for local counterinsurgents.
Colonial rule did a hell of a lot to fuck up these societies, to the point where it becomes hard to tell the difference between the fuckup of anticolonial war and the fuckup of colonialism.
That's true for those countries and Afghanistan. I think Bg is wrong when he says Afghanistan hasn't changed in 1000 years. It's actually changed a lot since the Soviet intervention. A socio-religious organization like the Taliban could never have existed under the old tribal structures - many of which were destroyed or greatly dimished in influence by 30 years of conflict.
The single, fatal flaw in the COINdinistas' ideas, even as tactic, is the notion that this rebellion suppression can be done effectively and throughly by foreign troops.
Except the COINdinistas would agree which is why they focus so much effort on "building host-nation capacity" and transitioning the effort to local forces. This was largely successful in Iraq, but the problem is that it is a tactical and operational success only that doesn't translate into strategic success. COIN can't solve the underlying problems withing a society and Seydlitz is right about the locals implementing what they want. There are some COINdinistas that confuse operational and strategic success which is the real "fatal flaw" in their thinking.
For Afghanistan, one (of many) problems with the COIN model and the COINdinista's plans is the creation of viable host-nation forces. They think it will be easier and more enduring than it is likely to be. Their error is not what you think - that US forces can independently win against an insurgency - their error is a more fundamental misunderstanding of Afghanistan and its capacity to support centralized governance.
Seydlitz,
ReplyDeleteThe Taliban government, for all its negative points, had accomplished two very important goals.
This is something we've talked about before on the old Intel Dump and you are still wrong on both counts. I won't provide another lengthy rehashing, but on the first point, the Taliban were able to consolidate power in the Pashtun areas, but were only able to make limited inroads elsewhere and only because of significant Pakistani support. All the factors that work against central governance generally worked against the Taliban and there really was no chance the Taliban could have extended their brand of governance country-wide for any significant length of time.
On the drug issue, that was a Taliban gambit to gain international political recognition and obtain $250 million in UN aid (about 5 years worth of Taliban opium-related income). Middlemen stockpiled opium ahead of the ban and the Taliban continued to get income from "taxing" those stockpiles. The cultivation ban also caused a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and it's unlikely the Taliban could have continued to enforce it for more than a couple of years due to the lack of any viable alernatives.
Even if one believes those two achievements were important, I'm not sure it stacks up well against the Taliban's support to AQ and numerous similar groups. The US spent over four years in a covert diplomacy effort to change this Taliban policy through the promise of aid, normalization of relations and eventual political recognition to no avail.
I'm not surprised you know Wilf. I often think of you when he writes about Clausewitz over at SMJ. As I said before, he provides some great criticism of some of the "new" concepts and ideas floating around these days.
Andy-
ReplyDeleteWe've discussed this on the old IntelDump. First, you argued against my view concerning the "Russian Plan" in connection with Bush's 2001-2 Afghan policy. You won.
So why do you mix that up with a completely different discussion we had, that being concerning a very different subject? That being the character of the Taliban regime pre-9/11, which Bush had been negociating with up to that point. You never did present a convincing argument concerning the view you now express about the Taliban. So why pretend you did now?
Seydlitz,
ReplyDeleteI may be misrembering things. What specifically do you object to concerning my characterization of the Taliban pre-9/11?
Andy-
ReplyDelete"misrembering"
I like that word.
Think about it some more. Your third paragraph, first sentence, says it all for me. Your focus is on process, and then all the sudden, that jump back into history? How do you really connect the two arguments of that paragraph?
I still don't get what you mean. My jump back into history was a response to your jump back into history. Your two points focused what you see as two important goals the Taliban accomplished (among the negatives, as you said) that our invasion screwed up. My counterargument is that those accomplishments are not very significant (and I can provide more reasons if you wish) and are relatively weak compared to the negatives, especially support to AQ where diplomacy failed.
ReplyDeleteI also wonder how, in practical terms, it would be possible to discrimate AQ, other foreign fighters and the Taliban on the battlefield, particularly since they were fighting together much of the time. I don't see how it's possible, but would like to hear an argument supporting that view.
Andy-
ReplyDeleteThe question is what you mean. You started this discussion.
What connects your two statements in your third paragraph . . . ?
"Even if one believes those two achievements were important, I'm not sure it stacks up well against the Taliban's support to AQ and numerous similar groups. . .
The US spent over four years in a covert diplomacy effort to change this Taliban policy through the promise of aid, normalization of relations and eventual political recognition to no avail."
What most connects these two statements is the perspective of interest of the Bush administration to overthrow the Taliban government in 2001. You are arguing a justifying polemic, which is fine, essentially Dick Cheney's view circa late 2001, which I would not describe as really fact-, but narrow interest-based btw.
Like I said, the Taliban argument's never really been made.
Seydlitz,
ReplyDeleteOk, let me lay it out then: Overthrow of the Taliban was inevitable for political and practical reasons.
Politically, the general sentiment of the country was very much in line with what you call the Dick Cheney view, to include the previous administration. The political argument for doing something besides overthrow the Taliban was materially weakened by the failed negotiation attempts by the both administrations, as well as by the Taliban promises that UBL was contained and US promises the Taliban would be held responsible for any more AQ attacks. That made further negotiation with the Taliban a non-starter politically and allowing the Taliban government to stand would be political suicide for any politician. That, alone, I think makes arguments about alternatives irrelevant, but there were other constraining political factors as well, such as the character of the regime, it's human rights record, etc. all of which made any kind of deal short of overthrow even more difficult politically. The two questionable positives you cite don’t amount to a hill of beans against that cold political reality.
On the practical side conditions favored overthrowing the Taliban as well. There is the obvious problem of distinguishing between AQ and Taliban, as mentioned previously. The Taliban would get pummelled pretty hard even if we went after AQ exclusively due to proximity and the simple fact that the Taliban would seek to defend its territory as we hunted AQ. Then there is the Northern Alliance which would clean up after us and would probably finish off the bloodied Taliban anyway. Maybe it’s possible to ignore that kind of resurgent civil war and still effectively hunt AQ, but I don’t think so. There was also the logistical problem of operating in a landlocked area with little infrastructure. To supply our forces going after AQ would require taking at least Bagram and probably Kandahar which means you would have to take Kabul and Kandahar city as well. I'm not sure how it's possible to take Bagram, Kabul and Kandahar and not de facto overthrow the Taliban even if one didn't intend to overthrow them.
So your statement that overthrowing the Taliban did not make sense and your implication that the real reason for overthrowing the Taliban was to possibly set a precendent for Iraq doesn't make any sense at all to me. In my view, there was no other option politically and, practically, singling out AQ while leaving the Taliban in power was probably not possible. But again, if there is a different argument to be made, then by all means make it.
Publius,
ReplyDelete"Bg, you do realize that COIN depends on not only the people of the client state, but on the American people as well, don't you?"
Seriously? Wow, Publius, I am only slightly insulted. I clearly understand the clash of wills and our own center of gravity. And I am not sure where you are getting the idea that I "favor these military adventures." I fight them. I don't favor them. I fight them because that is what I've been tasked to do. Let's not confuse a operational tactic (COIN) with a preference for how our country should be involved in the world. And "beating the drums for more involvement in foreign wars". Seriously? Wow.
Let's not get confused, my job as handed to me (not the job of the military at large) is to hunt down those who wish to do harm to America, it's people and it's interests. COIN is an operational tactic to accomplish that in some parts of the world (but not all, and not the tactic that I am involved in). That is it. Nothing more. It isn't a grand scheme to take over the world, it is a tactic to deal with a situation handed to the military by the civilian control.
Are there those who are "beating the drums", yes, those people do exist, but let's stop calling them advocates of COIN, they are advocates of something completely different. Politicians with agendas perhaps. They aren't preaching principles of an operational tactic or a strategy.
Trust me, I am not taking it personally, but I just feel that you are seriously failing to understand my position.
FDC,
ReplyDelete"The best way to meet the short term pragmatic military goals of someone else's civil war is to stay the fuck out of it."
Well said. Maybe you can do get right on that one and do something about that. Let me know how that turns out. I can't. I could "vote with my feet", but who the hell would hear that vote or even care? I can do more good right here.
Other than that, I won't rehash what Andy said. I guess it didn't truly hit me until Andy implied it, we are talking about two different groups of people.
Group 1: the "COINdinistas" (who this thread is attacking)
Those who are advocating COIN as a strategy for future engagements to future a political agenda.
Group 2: Developers and practitioners of the COIN tactic (the group I belong too)
Those who are using COIN as a tactic to meet the goals determined by elected civilian leadership.
To be clear. My view is that COIN is an operational tactic that we must use to accomplish the messy, complex mission set given to us (Iraq, AFG). I do feel it is an important facet of our doctrine, because if we did not use it's principles, it would cost additional American lives and would make meeting our mission objectives even more impossible than they already are. And so it goes...
Is it a formula for success everywhere? Hell no. Not in Somalia, not in Yemen, not in Nigeria, not in Mexico, not in the Philippines, not in a box, not with a fox. Not in a house, not with a mouse.
@Seydlitz: I know Wilf since early 2004.
ReplyDeleteI'm quite confident that you misunderstood me more than I misunderstood Wilf.
bg, Andy: No question that you are locked into a bad situation because of fatuous political decisions made by others.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there is an entirely separate strain of politico-military practitioners whose task appears to be to prevent genuine cost-benefit geopolitical discussion (and possibly reconsideration) of those decisions by advocating for a military toolkit (COIN) that will, supposedly, provide workable solutions.
And MY point is that, no, those solutions are NOT workable, because they presume way to many things that are unrealistic about the native peoples and places these COIN solutions are proposed for.
To say that "COIN is an operational tactic that we must use to accomplish the messy, ceomplex mission set given to us" is to reiterate Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn" analogy. It was the same idea I used to have, it was the same thing that JD used to believe.
But the past 8 years have knocked most of that silliness out of most of us. Charles was right all along: when you begin with a flawed premise, flawed intel and a flawed goal, the "correct" tactics will not get you where you want to go. "COIN" didn't work in Iraq any more than it worked in Algeria. What did work was a combination of bribery, chicanery and brutality, and the box of explosives we opened when we chopped off the lid of Saddam's Baath is still there and the fuse is still in place.
The problem with the notion of a foreign power trying to crush a local rebellion while simultaneously creating a local despot is that the two means are self-cancelling. The foreign troops create much of the rebellion they are trying to suppress, while the quisling regime loses the legitimacy it needs by the very process of its foreign creation. You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them...
So no, Andy, the initial invasion of Iraq had little to do with COIN. But the occupation...THAT had a LOT to do with COIN. We kept hearing how the Iraqis would stand up and we wouls stand down, etc... If anyone who told the truth had been taken seriously; that the place was not and was unlkiely to be a genuine worthwhile ally, a democracy or even well governed, that we were buying off the local factions, that the place was, in fact, a sectarian-riven, massively corrupt factional mess and that 10 or 100,000 U.S. soldiers couldn't whange that...do you think we'd still be there?
We'd have handed Maliki the keys back in 2008 and grabbed a hat. Declared victory and left.
The reasons I attack the COINdinistas is that and that alone: there is no historical precedent, no single working example of a non-colonial power that managed to erect a functional local government and crush a local rebellion by sending in large foreign maneuver elements. To suggest this, and by inference imply that it can be done either now or in future conflicts, is to introduce the Big Lie into the domestic political discourse about whether to intervene, or to stay on after intervening, in these wars.
Okay, FDC, I still get your point. I see a problem, tell me if I get it:
ReplyDeleteCOIN doesn't work, and we can't allow anyone to be a snake oil salesman selling it as a capability and a legitimate foreign policy COA for fear that it will led us into endless "small wars" of foreign entanglement.
What I don't see is your solution. Let me offer a few (none are new ideas, but are worth revisiting).
1. Let's have a war tax, one the government institutes any time it commits our troops to a foreign war for over a year. Now the pain is shared by all people, and when people are truly tired of feeling the pain, they vote those in charge out of the government and change policy. Would a poll/election minded president ever commit our troops to a prolonged combat engagement if he knew it would be his/her political suicide?
2. Mandate a 10% draft anytime the nation has a certain number of troops deployed overseas in combat zones. No exceptions, any one and every one of draft age is required to register and can be selected. No buying out of the draft, no college exemptions, nothing. If a draftee is not fit for military service (according to a study group formed by former military 70% of Americans don't qualify for military service), than those who don't qualify we be required to serve at home in some domestic service picking up brass at the range, serving food at chow halls, mowing grass, guarding gates, whatever. How awesome and popular would that be? Not very I bet (which is the point).
Both of these measures must be put in place 1 year from the day that the President commits a fixed number of troops to a specific theater (let's say 40,000). The President has one year to do whatever he wants with however many (i.e. Panama, Grenada, fun little expeditions), but after one year, let the pain begin.
Just a thought for those who wish to seriously limit the powers of the US Govt (mainly the Executive branch) from committing our nation to endless foreign entanglements.
Andy-
ReplyDeleteThere was nothing inevitable about the decision to overthrow the Taliban regime. It will take some doing to get through all the levels of assumptions in your comment, so here goes.
Was 9/11 a criminal act or an act of war? Depends on who was responsible, right? If one argues that Al Qaida was responsible and Al Qaida is not representing a political community or is not a "state", then Al Qaida is essentially a criminal organization guilty of mass murder. Does one wage "war" against criminals? Not really.
Now if the guilty party is a state and this party has committed an act of war, well then you defend yourself. Easy, right? But this is not the case.
Now say that the criminal organization is being hosted by a state, but that state had nothing to do with the attack, do you go to war with the state or do you negociate? What if other states (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) are actually more connected to the criminals than the host (who may have known nothing about the attack?). All kinda murky to me, not the obvious "slam-dunk" as you make it out.
The state in question is Afghanistan, the "Graveyard of Empires" which brings to mind a warning from an article Milt Bearden wrote back in 2001 before Bush did what you now see as the "inevitable" . . . (sorry my cut and paste ain't working at the moment, so no link or quote - too bad that).
But I did describe the overthrow of the Taliban as "precedent" didn't I? The Bush adminstration needed a state as target right after 9/11, that is if they were going to be able to do what their real intention as "history's actors" required. Overthrowing the Taliban regime settled the question as to act of war or criminality in their favor, that is it was a necessary part of their much larger goal of transforming the Middle East through violence, but connected to 9/11. The victory over the Taliban also added to the aura of the Bush regime as it released the NSS of 2002 which ushered in preventive war as official US policy.
As to "political pressure" and "political suicide", the Bush administration actually made a conscious effort to go against whatever the Clinton Administration had done in the past, the famous "ABC" formulation of "anything but Clinton", so whatever the Clinton administration's experience with the Taliban would have had no impact. This is of course shown by the two high level meetings that the Bush Administration had with the Taliban in March and July 2001 (which concerned construction of an oil pipeline). As to "political suicide", allowing the Taliban regime to remain would have been so, whereas failure to kill or capture OBL obviously was not?
Also Bush being motivated in his political decisions by public pressure? The "Decider"? The same guy who had implemented so many bad and unpopular decisions and then stuck to them to the bitter end?
What you describe might fit Obama's administration but one has to forget a whole lot of history to make it fit Bush's.
If you want to argue that 9/11 made the Iraq war inevitable, since we know now that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were arguing for an attack on Iraq on September 12th, then I'll agree. But to argue that Bush felt that he had no choice but to overthrow the Taliban regime isn't really a historical argument, but a narrow polemic. The basic truth behind that particular bunch of liars is that they did what they wanted to do, time and again, not what they felt compelled to do.
" . . . As the Bush administration balances its military and political goals, plans to send U.S. troops into Afghanistan to seize bin Ladin should be weighed carefully for their practicality and political implications. Strident calls to add the overthrow of the Taliban regime to the list of American objectives may be attractive in terms of human rights, but that objective, too, must be weighed against the goal of making certain that the events of September 11 are not repeated.
ReplyDeleteSome have called for arming and forming an alliance with Afghanistan's now-leaderless Northern Alliance. This grouping of commanders, meticulously pulled together in shifting alliances by the late Ahmed Shah Masoud, now holds about ten percent of Afghan territory. Already the recipient of military and financial support from Russia and Iran, it seems a logical partner in the U.S. quest to locate and neutralize the bin Ladin network and replace the Taliban regime.
But that is not a wise course-not simply because of the cold irony of allying ourselves with the Russians in any fight in Afghanistan, but because it is not likely to achieve either goal. It is more than doubtful that the Northern Alliance forces could capture bin Ladin and his followers, and there is no reasonable guarantee that they could dislodge the Taliban. On the contrary, the more likely consequences of a U.S. alliance with the late Masoud's fighters would be the coalescing of Afghanistan's majority Pashtun tribes around their Taliban leaders and the rekindling of a brutal, general civil war that would continue until the United States simply gave up . . ."
Milt Bearden, 2001
http://www.khyber.org/publications/006-010/afghangraveyard.shtml
Sven-
ReplyDeleteHey, I misunderstand stuff all the time. Ask my wife . . .
And I appreciate all the comments that have been made on this post. It's been a great discussion so far . . .
I did think that Wilf had made a good point which you may have missed . . .
"U.S. forces are drifting toward viewing counterinsurgency and war-fighting as distinct forms of activity. They are not. They are inextricably linked, in terms of equipment, training, doctrine and education. Thus the Victorian expression of “big wars and small wars.” "
A very Clausewitzian argument btw. That along with a comment he made about "WOW generation COIN oil" led me to believe he put that particular concept among the N&S I mentioned in my initial post.
bg: Not bad ideas, in and of themselves. Rather than try and comment directly, let me try and summarize my thoughts, instead.
ReplyDelete1. The main reason we're in this cleft stick is because we have no real idea of what enemies we're facing out there, what their capabilities are (as opposed to either what THEY say they are or what those whose principal interest is keeping Americans frightened and the U.S. defense dollar tap open say they are), and what the range of course of actions to deal with these enemies are, the benefits of and costs of each.
2. One thing that should generally be considered UNdesirable and a course of last resort is the introduction of U.S. maneuver elements into foreign rebellions and civil wars. Got spooks? Send 'em. Got UW/FID/SF types? Send 'em. Got civil government advisers, water purification experts, schoolteachers, taxi dancers?
Send 'em.
But keep your tanks, trucks, planes and helicopters, your platoons of Joe Snuffy and his immense rucksack back at home practicing to fight the big, existential-threat wars. Sending this stuff to suppress revolts in foreign countries will generally inflame the locals and get you nothing in return.
3. The best way to make this happen is:
a. to ensure that your democracy is vital and engaged. We have largely lost that, for a number of reasons we have discussed here before. Chief among those is we have failed...
b. ...to ensure a critical and politically independent press. 80% of the public are sheep; the press is a bellwether. If the press whores for access or, worse, is a blatant shill for one political faction (see; FOX) while pretending to be politically neutral (that's critical - if the FOXers were openly recognized as the house organ of the Pithecanthropine wing of the GOP they'd be less damaging than they are now, where 10-20% of the stupider end of the American public think they really are in the "news" business.)
c. ...to ensure that your military both serves and is composed of the Nation in Arms. A professional long-service force is very tempting to use in fiddly pointless foreign adventures.
In all honestly, I see our nation as so far sold into oligarchy and so far removed from critical thinking that these snake-oil peddlers will convince our "leaders" to get involved in more of these damn things - like Yemen - until we finally break down financially. The internalization of the notion that sending infantry battalions to suppress foreign revolts will help, and as such the people pushing the "maneuver-element-COIN" are helping repave the road traveled by 16th Century Spain.
FDC,
ReplyDelete"2. One thing that should generally be considered UNdesirable and a course of last resort is the introduction of U.S. maneuver elements into foreign rebellions and civil wars. Got spooks? Send 'em. Got UW/FID/SF types? Send 'em. Got civil government advisers, water purification experts, schoolteachers, taxi dancers?"
You stumbled upon the biggest chicken or the egg argument in the COIN world. Which comes first, security or nation building?
I see you argument, let's send in people to help fix the real problems, and let's have a small footprint filled with specialists. But can those specialists do their job building roads, purifying water or even training local forces without maneuver elements for security?
The answer time and time again came back to no, you must establish security to allow those specialists to do their jobs. Thus, 4th ID.
It sounds great in theory, everything you mentioned, but there are always those who hate what you are trying to do and they will try to stop you. And they won't do it with signs, protests and sit ins, they will do it with suicide bombs, small arms attacks and kidnappings. Ugly world. Thus tanks, armored soldiers, etc. The problem is that the traditional, or Air Land Battle, Cold warrior still thinks that more is better. In COIN, less is more. (But not enough is still not enough, that is the rub).
"Trust me, I am not taking it personally, but I just feel that you are seriously failing to understand my position."
ReplyDeleteBg, I understand your position all too well. And believe me, it was never my intent to insult you. Most of us are all too well aware of where you as an active duty guy sit, i.e., between a rock and a hard place. So, no, I am not blaming you for the predicament with which the nation is faced. I also won't blame you for carrying out your orders in the best way you can; I would expect no less.
What I will say is this: I believe you're being naive in thinking that the "COIN practitioners," in whose ranks you belong, are in any way in synch with the COINdinistas of whom we speak. In fact, it's my contention that you practitioners do not matter to them. As FDChief noted, that group is very big on the "let's you and him fight it out" philosophy. And the very unfortunate truth, at least IMO, is that none of us can be sure of the group in which many of your military leaders rightfully belong. Do I trust them? Some of them, sure. Others? No.
Understand where this old soldier is coming from. Neither I nor many others like me who've gone through this shit care how good you get at COIN. We say it's not your job. We say the last legitimate COIN war in which the U.S. Army engaged was the Civil War. We say your job is to defend the U.S. We say you're not doing it in Afghanistan, not the way you want to go about it. Note we're not pacifists, nor do we say you shouldn't kill bad guys.
I'll have more on this in a separate post. Think corruption, here and abroad. That's where American colonialism, AKA COIN, leads.
PART 1
ReplyDeleteOK, guys, let's back up here a bit. Are we talking about an "insurgency", typically defined as a rebellion (opposition and actions taken against an established authority) or a violent birthing/re-birthing process involving tactics commonly used by insurgents and/or rebels? You know, is "terrorism" the enemy or the tactics of an enemy?
I ask the question because we tend to forget that the existing governmental structure (not merely its political ideology) was violently destroyed. We're not talking about one party going out of power to be replaced, in the same solid and functional governing structures, by another party. We are talking about a point in time where government and all its attendant societal services ceased to exist, and an invading force insisted that a totally new form, not just political party, be birthed in its place. Doesn't matter whether or not we agreed with the form and internal policies of that government. If it functioned and maintained internal order to a level which did not result in open, significant internal revolt, it was a functioning government.
Now, in wars gone by, we set the stage for an orderly birthing/re-birthing process by being an enlightened conqueror who, after violently assaulting a people, put in place occupying forces robust enough to ensure sufficient societal stability for a new government (that is a governing entity, structure and regulating/delivery systems, not simply a political ideology) to be born, mature and enter into functional adulthood. The occupying force was robust enough to transition the dynamic of change from the violence of war and the ensuing local governmental vacuum to that of social intercourse and stability to arrive at a functioning governmental structure that has the consent (even if grudgingly) of the governed.
Rather, this time around, we violently destroyed two governments, and in the societal void thereby created, provided little more than "advice" and tepid security for the reconstruction of one of mankind's most complicated endeavors, functioning societies.
bg correctly talks about "stability" operations, but is, in my opinion, seriously missing the mark. We created the instability, or more properly a structural void, and because of the method and profound level of instability we did create, it will take more than simple advice and tepid public safety forces to create stability out of virtual structural nothingness. In the void we created, numerous groups are calling upon historic rivalries to be dominant in the birthing process. It's a destructive fight by many, many sperm to successfully fertilize a single egg, and insufficient structure to moderate the battle.
Of course, we just lived through 8 years where ideology trumped the basic form of our government. Having a right wing oligarchy was indeed more important than our Constitution. The Party was the government and the government was the party. Thus, we fall into traps as we did in Afghanistan and Iraq. Simply eradicate the evil political party and good will automatically triumph. It's like creationism and the idea that all complex things come into being by a single stroke of divine intervention rather than an orderly evolutionary process. While both may be possible, I find it hard to imagine bumbling men being "Creators", even if they do think they are the anointed agents of their god.
PART 2
ReplyDeleteBecause we refused to follow our carefully and wisely developed post hostilities doctrine (or "Occupation" doctrine), the only serious solution is the equivalent of another invasion, conquest and real "Occupation", the necessary resources for which are now probably double what would have sufficed if done properly in the beginning. Momentum is on the side of the conqueror/occupier only for a modest amount of time. The vanquished are only shocked into submission for a brief period of time. Liberation pertains to the expulsion/destruction of an external occupier and restoration of the former order by the locals, as in France and the Low Countries in WWII. We did not liberate Iraq or Afghanistan, we defeated them and their former leaders, just as we defeated Germany and Japan.
The momentum has shifted away from us, not simply in military terms, but sociological terms.
WASF
In line with Al's post . . .
ReplyDelete"The events of 9/11 were an epiphany for Bush. After a single day's seculsion, the new president emerged transformed. From now on, he would be the decisive leader of a nation at war confronting a threat that was both immediate and mortal . . . Shocked by the crime and concerned about its safety, the American public rallied around the leader.
The strategy that emerged was a blend of the more imperial formulations of the 1991 draft national security document [aka Defense Planning Guidance of 1992] prepared by Defense Department officials in the Bush I administration (many of whom had returned as advisors to Bush II) and the militant notions of the neoconservative worldview, with its special preoccupation with the Middle East. Strategically, the "war on terror" thus reflected traditional imperial concerns over control of Persian Gulf resources as well as neoconservatives' desire to enhance Israel's security by eliminating Iraq as a threat. . .
Not surprisingly, nemesis was not long in coming. . .
Bush subsequently confirmed in various comments that for him 9/11 was a call to a special mission, a personal epiphany with touches of divine vocation. This belief gave him a self-confidence bordering on arrogance and inspired a simple-minded Manichaean dogmatism. His speechwriters, some with strong neocon leanings, took advantage of this propensity, infusing into his public statements a penchant for swaggering challenges such as "bring 'em on", broad-brush characterizations ("axis of evil"), and occasionally even Islamophobic demagogy. One can only surmise that the traditionally scrupulous NSC oversight of presidential speech drafts had become dysfunctional. . . "
Z. Brzezinski, Second Chance, pp 136-137, 142.
bg: "Security" as defined in the less landscaped parts of the world isn't rocket science. It doesn't take 4th ID and, in fact, sending the guys from the 4th ID, with their Red Man, their ipods and their 240B's will probably garner you as much more hostile intent from the locals as it will deter assault from the bazaar badmashes.
ReplyDeleteInstead, you MAKE your security out of the local tribesmen. This requires patience and cleverness rather than LAVs, but it works better in that you spend a hell of a lot less of your own blood and treasure, AND you end up with a colony that yields a higher return on your investment. So you get Kitchener building an army in Egypt, Gordon in China and then the Sudan, generations of Brits building the Indian Army. French spahis, and so on and so on...
It's the REAL oil spot strategy; you start in the capital with a handful of SF types and the local Presidential Guard or whatever the wogs are calling their "elite" household unit. Once you've got them licked into shape to hold their own ground, you spread out into the provinces.
And here's the thing: if you can't win it that way, you can't win, really, even WITH the 4th ID.
Sure, you can DESTROY - with the 4th ID you just make a wasteland and call it peace. The French destroyed much of Algeria trying to rule it, the Portuguese much of Angola (although, in fairness, it's hard to tell how much damage was due to the war and how much to the generally fucked-up-ness of Portuguese colonial incompetence)
It works, if you want to do it. But why, if we don't plan or want to go in and rule the place directly?
Frankly, my take on the uniformed COINdinistas is that they are desperately trying to find a job for the maneuver forces here. Short of a handful of QRF companies, there really isn't one.
If these people were serious about wanting to fuck around in other people's rebellions and civil wars they should be advocating a truly massive expansion of our intelligence, unconventional war and special forces capabilities - and I mean by that the OLD Special Forces, the Mike Force types pre- and early Vietnam.
The fact that people like Nagl, the Kagans, Max Boot and the rest of the coterie pushing for the continued occupation of central Asia with U.S. conventional maneuver units aren't doing this suggests that either
1) their aim is not what they say it is - they, in fact, wish to establish something more like a colony than an ally, or
2) they don't understand occupations, the occupier or occupiers - in fact, they think that occupations are only bad when the occupiers are Nazis or Soviets and good when the occupiers are Americans or Israelis. That intentions trump physical actions, in other words.
Either case is pretty loathsome, but the latter has the additional failing of being foolish as well.
And here's the thing about "COIN" as defined by "Western troops kill local revolutionaries/gangsters/anti-colonial guerilla groups" - it often goes badly for the Western troops doing the killing.
ReplyDeleteThe French Army nearly imploded after their wars in Indochina and Algeria. The OAS, the right-wing organization formed to try and hang on to Algeria, even tried to assassinate de Gaulle, and devolved into a terrorist organization that killed, among other things, nuns and cleaning ladies. Several of the worst of the OAS thugs fled to Argentina after the loss of Algeria where they appear to have influenced the Argentine "Dirty War" of the 1970's - let's not forget that it was Roger Trinquier who actually formalized in print the need for counterinsurgents to torture their captives to get intel to roll up the guerilla groups.
The Portuguese likewise had the "Movimento das Forças Armadas" that grew out of its long COIN war in Africa. Tired of that war, their pointless losses and the general fucked-up-ness of the Portuguese government the MFA overthrew the thing in April of '74. Admittedly, given the generally rotten state of Portugal's dictatorship that was probably a good thing, but in our case...
Well, maybe it would STILL be a good thing...
OK, kidding aside, COIN is pointless in a post-colonial world. If you're not going to rule the place, why would you want to send your uniformed military to fight in it? And if the local "government" needs foreign troops to prop it up, how much of a government is it? And how long will it last when the foreigners leave, anyway?
Al: the difference is that Germany and Japan were unified modern Westphalian states. They had a long tradition of governance, a central identity and had been led into a disastrous aggressive war by militarist leaders.
ReplyDeleteAll we had to do was find (or create) local leaders - which was very doable, even in the ruins of Bonn or Tokyo, the local elites were still there in some sense. Within a couple of years we had pretty much simply re-erected the original German and Japanese state with some cosmetic changes to constitutions - although you notice that Mitsubishi and Benz and Toyota and Siemens still held a hell of a lot of the power - and there they were.
Iraq and even more Afghanistans were tribes with flags, farcical and fictional post-colonial notions. Iraq had the legacy of centuries of Ottoman rule, the least competent in Eurasia, Afghanistan even less than that. What held Iraq "together" as much as anything was the Army and the Baath. We disbanded the one and drove the other underground or to Syria. Afghanistan had nothing: twenty years of occupation and civil war had reduced it the the goddam Bronze Age.
So we couldn't have done a 1945-style occupation successfully in those countries, ever, regardless of the blood and treasure we spent. In Germany and Japan we smashed the jars to knock off the top. but the pieces were large enough to glue together. Iraq and Afghanistan were too fragile; they shattered into shards that may eventually be reassembled into something like the original shape, but who the hell knows when and by whom. My bet is a couple of autocrats, if not Karzai and Maliki someone less loveable but more brutally competent.
Someone like...oh...Saddam.
Chief-
ReplyDeleteYes, Germany and Japan had something formidable to begin with, and once we crushed them and convinced them that their foreign policies were unacceptable to the rest of the world, we kept a massive occupation force in place while they picked up the pieces and rebuilt themselves to the same level of society as ante-bellum, but with a more acceptable foreign policy and an adjusted domestic policy.
Keep in mind, however, that we did not crush these two nations because of any of their domestic policies. Had Adolf stuck to subjugating the German population and killing off only his domestic foes, he could very well have lived his "reign" out peacefully. It was when the Axis powers intruded in our domestic tranquility that we finally picked up the torch, some two years after the start of open hostilities. Yes, while we were at it, we guided the formation of the new German and Japanese governments, but only because we owned them as conquerors.
There are numerous "friendly" states with human rights records similar to Saddam and the Taliban. We don't invade them, because they have no perceived negative impact on our internal policies or global aspirations, and are often supportive or at least tolerant of us.
Afghanistan should have never been other than a classical "punitive" operation. "You mess with the Bull, you face the Horns", as we say in my ancestral Sicily. Rather than destroy the government, we should have simply made it clear that their current behavior was intolerant and let them suffer until they changed their behavior or ruling party. Instead, we did a half assed invasion without the necessary occupation. Iraq should simply never have taken place, but when it did, it should have been done according to existing doctrine. The proper occupation of these two nations would have been long and tiring (and probably beyond our resources), but it is the only path that would have any chance of success. Yes, since we are working with a sub-optimal indigenous situation to begin with, the odds of success, even when following doctrine, are not good. But ignoring doctrine only worsens things. Dramatically.
Seydlitz,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your response.
Now say that the criminal organization is being hosted by a state, but that state had nothing to do with the attack, do you go to war with the state or do you negociate?
Two points:
1. You mentioned before that you thought the Taliban had developed a “legitimate” monopoly of violence. If that is the case then their support to AQ amounts to state-sponsorship, which would make the Taliban accountable for the actions of the party they are sponsoring. AQ was not some group clandestinely operating in Afghanistan unbeknownst to the Taliban; they were brothers-in-arms, even doing some of their dirty work, like assassinating Massoud and others. While it’s certainly true the Taliban had nothing to do with the tactical and operational planning of the attack itself, they were aware and supportive of AQ’s goals and strategies in general terms, one of which was to attack the US. The Taliban materially aided that goal in a variety of ways, so I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say they had “nothing” to do with the attack.
2. 9/11 was hardly the first act of terrorism by AQ. If it was, then you might have a point about the possibility for negotiation, but AQ’s activities were hardly unprecedented. The thrust of US negotiations for three years were about AQ/UBL and the attacks they were responsible for. You can find a useful summary of the diplomacy below, written in the summer of 2001.
http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB97/tal40.pdf
While it’s imaginable that another round at the negotiating table might have done the trick, there’s no evidence it would have turned out any differently than previous attempts. After the 9/11 attacks the Taliban were telling us the same things they’d been telling us for years – claiming there was no way UBL could be responsible, that he was under their control, asking for “evidence” of his involvement (which they’d already been given regarding previous attacks), etc.
But I did describe the overthrow of the Taliban as "precedent" didn't I? The Bush adminstration needed a state as target right after 9/11, that is if they were going to be able to do what their real intention as "history's actors" required.
I think you give the Bushies way too much credit here, as foresight was never their strong suit.
As to "political pressure" and "political suicide", the Bush administration actually made a conscious effort to go against whatever the Clinton Administration had done in the past, the famous "ABC" formulation of "anything but Clinton", so whatever the Clinton administration's experience with the Taliban would have had no impact. This is of course shown by the two high level meetings that the Bush Administration had with the Taliban in March and July 2001 (which concerned construction of an oil pipeline).
Actually, the Clinton administration was talking to the Taliban about oil pipelines long before most people had even heard of AQ or UBL, so your example undermines your assertion....
continued...
part 2:
ReplyDeleteAlso Bush being motivated in his political decisions by public pressure? The "Decider"? The same guy who had implemented so many bad and unpopular decisions and then stuck to them to the bitter end?
All politicians are motivated by public pressure. Once Bush “decided” he was pretty stubborn, but that does not mean he was immune to public pressure. Some googling will provide you with many examples.
But to argue that Bush felt that he had no choice but to overthrow the Taliban regime isn't really a historical argument, but a narrow polemic. The basic truth behind that particular bunch of liars is that they did what they wanted to do, time and again, not what they felt compelled to do.
Well, if my arguments are narrow polemic at least they are somewhat supported. Certainly your characterization of the Bush administration in that last sentence is true for a lot of things, but not everything, including 9/11 IMO. I could also point to Iraq where, once the invasion was over, the Bush administration was compelled by circumstance to do things it never intended.
So, what’s your alternative? You’ve yet to offer anything besides “negotiation” and you didn’t address my points about the practicality of attacking AQ but not the Taliban. If you’re going to argue that negotiation or whatever was better, even in 20/20 hindsight, then it seems to me you need to do more than declare it to be so.
Now, one option Chief suggested some time ago that I DO think was possible was to go in, chase and kill as many AQ and/or Taliban as possible for some months or maybe a year and then get out. The Taliban would still be overthrown and the country would probably return to civil war which the Taliban might or might not win. I think I was critical of Chief’s position at the time, but in hindsight it’s looking a lot better, at least if you’re not an Afghan.
Also, thanks for the Bearden article. It was mostly good, but perpetuated several historic myths about Afghanistan.
Here’s an interesting passage (emphasis added):
”Since 1998, the hunt for bin Ladin has been the driving force behind U.S. policy toward Afghanistan. Though the Taliban have repeatedly claimed that the Saudi has been under their control and incapable of fomenting the various attacks with which he is charged-including that against the U.S.S. Cole in Aden and those on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon-the U.S. government has little doubt that bin Ladin is the culprit. The confrontation with him and those who shelter him is at the point of no return.
“It probably could not be otherwise…”
;)
PS: I think there is something wrong with the comment boxes on this site. I can’t copy and paste into them with Firefox but it works fine in IE. Weird.
Are we discussing who's the bad guy or how one might have increased the odds of a successful outcome in what our administration set out to do?
ReplyDeleteFD Chief said:
ReplyDeleteCOIN is pointless in a post-colonial world. If you're not going to rule the place, why would you want to send your uniformed military to fight in it?
My response is:
The post-post-colonial world is really a post-national world.
Old fashioned thinking was structured about nations as the fundamental organizational unit.
Modern thinking is about money and its associated fundamental organizational unit.
This modern thinking process has co-opted the decision making process in order to drive its own agenda. You can observe governmental decision makers making coherent but non-optimal government decisions.
You only need a small tin-foil beany to conclude that the are optimizing something other than the public weal.
Ael: You should really try and get a handshake with John Robb - you guys would get on like a house on fire. He says and has been saying the same thing for several years now; that all these heavy-footed foreign interventions and conventional war/COIN schemes abroad are the 21st Century equivalent of the Brits getting out of their trenches in April 1916 and walking into the machinegun fire with rifles at the high port.
ReplyDeleteI am more concerned that he may be right, and that you are right and that the senatorial class has abandoned the public weal...
Al: I think the problem with "occupying" Iraq, doctrine or no, would be that we would eventually have been faced with the ugly reality: install a dictator or let the place fight its civil war.
Either way, the results aren't just sub-optimal, they're so bad that the seriously jeopardize our geopolitical operations abroad.
Saddam was an opportunistic gomer. We could have either bribed him back into the tent or engineered an assassination and a coup. We invaded, fucked up an already fucked up society, and refused to man up and accept that the only way out was what we're now doing: empower a dictator and let him crush his enemies.
Chief-
ReplyDeleteAl: I think the problem with "occupying" Iraq, doctrine or no, would be that we would eventually have been faced with the ugly reality: install a dictator or let the place fight its civil war.
My point is not whether the stable outcome (dictator or oppressive government) is "nice" but whether or not the internal affairs and foreign policy of that resulting state have any negative impact on our affairs. We are talking pragmatism, not altruism.
For example, until this year, the right wing wackos of TX had no interest, concern or opinion about the internal affairs of the state of Vermont. Vermont, however, has now become an existential threat to many Texans by the passage of a simple bill.
Similarly, the US had no issues with the affairs of Switzerland until we realized that billions in tax liabilities were being illegally avoided as a result of their laws. Thus pressure was applied, not to topple the government, not to change their form of government, not to change how they treated their residents, but to simply change their secrecy practices to satisfy our interests.
You are correct. There were much better ways to make Saddam and the affairs of his state less intrusive upon the affairs and interests of the US, if they were, indeed, intrusive. I am not saying the "invasion" option was appropriate or even necessary. I'm just saying that if that option is chosen, then do it properly.
The difficulty we face in our current culture is that the principal interest being served is the accumulation of ever increasing wealth by an ever smaller portion of the population. A result is that while there may not be a social or defense interest in diddling in the affairs of other states, there are far to many financial ones. This is further compounded by the fact that "war is good for business" for some very significant businesses. Blackwater is a classic example.
Andy-
ReplyDeleteThanks for your response.
The "monopoly of legitimate violence" is Weber's and a commonly held definition of the state. The fact that the Taliban had achieved this is the basis for them being considered effective negotiating partners, in that it could be assumed that they could deliver on agreements they made with other states. This does not follow to AQ actions outside of Afghanistan, that is 9/11, since that would not call their "monopoly of legitimate violence" within the borders of their controlled area into question.
OBL's declaration of war was in 1996 I think, but he didn't represent a state/political community nor did he have the ability to release a binding declaration for the Ullmah (community of believers). Clinton's policy response was appropriate given these conditions although we could argue that his actions in individual cases were not. Bush arrives, "ABC" kicks in and AQ's status as a threat is downgraded, as well documented by Richard Clarke . . . I found your reference to my mention of Clinton's contacts with the Taliban, as "undermining my position", very curious. How exactly does it do that? Clinton broke off discussions with the Taliban in 1998 due to their association with OBL, whereas Bush resumed contact with the Taliban two months after entering office? Yet another example of how Bush's regime does not fit at all the assumptions you make regarding it.
As to my precedent argument, the history of 2001-2009 fits my view as to the extent of their ambitions. I could provide a nice long quote from Bacevich's "The Limits of Power" if you wish. You assume that the Bush regime was simply another bunch of US politicians, they were not. They were extremists and radicals who wished to implement a radical "imperialist" policy which would not be limited to a series of preventive wars and would/did include radical policies at home.
You mention that the Bush administration "was compelled to do things it never intended", such as tweeking this or that tactical approach, such as adopting the French plan for Iraqi elections, but when did they ever reverse a policy? Even in the face of little public support for their position? Even if you are able to google something up the exception would not make the rule, rather only highlight their lack of traditional political give and take. This goes to the basics of their worldview, which is Staussian btw.
The Bearden quote speaks of "confrontation", but that hardly would be defined as overthrowing the Taliban state which he explicitly warns against. There were as Bearden's article indicates a range of policy options on the table in the Fall of 2001, contrary to what you have argued. In one of Al's latest comments he mentioned how Bush destroyed both the Taliban and Iraqi states. This policy implemented by partisans who saw the "state" as an impediment to achieving their goals just as they did domestically in the US. The view was that if they simply kickstarted their own version of crony-capitalism in Iraq, the rest would take care of itself. This is not only a naive view of the way the world works but the radical view of a millennialist fanatic. When in history has an occupation ever been handled like this?
Part 1
Part 2
ReplyDeleteThe same basic point has been made again and again on this thread, that being that incompetent policy, or incompetently implemented policy can not be compensated for at the operational or tactical levels, no matter what the level of military brillance or expertise. William R. Polk has written how the Bush administration ensured that there would be a Taliban resurgence in the manner they installed their man Karzai in Kabul. In other words, if the politicos pizz in the miltary's soup it doesn't matter if the soldiers try to eat it with a knife or even a much bigger spoon . . . they're still drinking pizz.
Btw, Polk was another highly regarded area expert who acted as a flashing red light to Bush's decision to overthrow the Taliban regime. And yet another expert whose view was discarded by a narrow group of fanatics who fancied themselves as "history's actors".
If one can't grasp that essential fact of the radicalism of the Bush regime, one is not going to be able to make much sense of what happened between 2001-2009. Ignoring that essential fact (for whatever reason) does in fact constitute a highly partisan view, essentially suspended in mid-air with little to support it.
Hey guys,
ReplyDeleteWe're at 62 comments, which is great, but maybe it's time for another thread . . . ?
Al posted this . . .
ReplyDelete"Yes, Germany and Japan had something formidable to begin with, and once we crushed them and convinced them that their foreign policies were unacceptable to the rest of the world, we kept a massive occupation force in place while they picked up the pieces and rebuilt themselves to the same level of society as ante-bellum, but with a more acceptable foreign policy and an adjusted domestic policy."
Just wanted to make a couple of comments concerning this which I found interesting.
First, both Germany and Japan (Germany more so) had democratic movements prior to the 1930s. There is also the influence of the USSR on all this, that is follow the US lead or you might end up with the other guys. . .
Second, we were also involved in occupation duty in Korea at that time. The Sovs in the north and we in the south, in fact the dividing line was an old Japanese Army boundary if memory serves. So was South Korea democratic prior to the Korean war? Or where they rather something else? What exactly was the US influence there?
My point is that the defining characteristic as to democratic development may not have been our presence at all (although it being a positive influence), but rather the political character and past of the nation in question . . .
Phil Carter has resigned . . .
ReplyDeletehttp://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
OMG.
ReplyDeleteGreg Craig and Phil Carter were both big proponents for the rule of law.
Glenn Greenwald tells us that Greg Craig and Phil Carter are now both gone.
This makes it harder to convince people that we are the good guys.
Clearly, the only solution is to shut Glenn Greenwald down before he can do more damage to vital American interests.
WASF.
Seydlitz,
ReplyDeleteThanks again for your comments.
The "monopoly of legitimate violence" is Weber's and a commonly held definition of the state. The fact that the Taliban had achieved this is the basis for them being considered effective negotiating partners, in that it could be assumed that they could deliver on agreements they made with other states. This does not follow to AQ actions outside of Afghanistan, that is 9/11, since that would not call their "monopoly of legitimate violence" within the borders of their controlled area into question.
On the first part yes, the Taliban could deliver on agreements. I don’t dispute that at all. My point was they refused to do so, time and again, and did not indicate they were any more serious after 9/11 since their position did not change after the attack. On the second part, you seem to be suggesting that harboring and assisting violent groups is OK so long as the actual acts of violence cannot be traced directly back the harboring state. If so, I disagree completely. Most of the hijackers received training in AQ camps in Afghanistan and much of the funding and coordination went through Afghanistan, which could not have occurred without active Taliban support. If I knowingly harbor a criminal in my house and provide him with resources and comfort knowing his criminal intentions, then I am at least an accessory if not a conspirator.
I found your reference to my mention of Clinton's contacts with the Taliban, as "undermining my position", very curious. How exactly does it do that? Clinton broke off discussions with the Taliban in 1998 due to their association with OBL, whereas Bush resumed contact with the Taliban two months after entering office? Yet another example of how Bush's regime does not fit at all the assumptions you make regarding it.
Who is making assumptions here? Clinton did NOT break off discussions with the Taliban in 1998, they actually they increased for about a year after the Embassy bombings, continued until Bush took office, and even included a phone conversation with Mullah Omar himself. That’s something you would have known if you’d read the link I provided in my last set of comments. That and other primary source documentation on our relationship with the Taliban are over on GWU’s National Security Archive if you care to read some of it.
You assume that the Bush regime was simply another bunch of US politicians, they were not. They were extremists and radicals who wished to implement a radical "imperialist" policy which would not be limited to a series of preventive wars and would/did include radical policies at home.
No, I actually I think both characterizations are true to an extent which is admittedly a more nuanced position that you seem to have.
continued...
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteYou mention that the Bush administration "was compelled to do things it never intended", such as tweeking this or that tactical approach, such as adopting the French plan for Iraqi elections, but when did they ever reverse a policy?
Ok, so you’ve shifted to goalposts to reversal of policy. No problem. Here are the obvious ones off the top of my head:
- Dropped all but one precondition for negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program.
- Reversed the initial refusal to hold talks with Iran and Syria on Iraq.
- Reversed the policy on a timetable for Iraqi withdrawal.
- Reversed several DoD policies on procurement, end strength, etc. which changed when Gates took over.
- Almost complete reversal of North Korean policy. Bush began by dismantling the 1994 Clinton agreement, promised no bilateral negotiations, promised no reward for bad behavior, insisted that NK admit to a uranium enrichment program before any progress/assistance from the US, etc. Bush reversed every one of those and even signed an agreement in 2007 that was almost the identical to one Clinton signed in 1994.
Do I need to go on?
I just thought of something else. You said before, “The basic truth behind that particular bunch of liars is that they did what they wanted to do, time and again, not what they felt compelled to do.” How do you explain the 2007 Iran NIE? By your logic I supposed it had no effect?
The Bearden quote speaks of "confrontation", but that hardly would be defined as overthrowing the Taliban state which he explicitly warns against. There were as Bearden's article indicates a range of policy options on the table in the Fall of 2001, contrary to what you have argued.
Yes, he warned against it. What are these alternatives you keep insisting were on the table but haven’t spelled out? There was FDChief’s, which I explained earlier, but what else? Nor have you explained how was it possible to attack AQ in Afghanistan without de facto overthrowing the Taliban? As for Bearden, he provided a lot of cautions about what we should NOT do, but little in the way of what we SHOULD do. The exception was the call to include Pashtuns and moderate Taliban which is exactly what we did. You have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. If alternative policy choices were so easy and so obvious in 2001 then it should be very easy, nine years later, for you to use that hindsight to provide alternatives with at least some detail of how they might have been practically implemented.
If one can't grasp that essential fact of the radicalism of the Bush regime, one is not going to be able to make much sense of what happened between 2001-2009. Ignoring that essential fact (for whatever reason) does in fact constitute a highly partisan view, essentially suspended in mid-air with little to support it.
To begin with, the charge of “radicalism” is opinion, not fact, since questions of one’s radicalism are inherently relative and ultimately rooted in ideology. Therefore the charge you make that ignoring what you believe to be a “fact” is, itself, highly partisan and amounts to the pot calling the kettle black. Regardless, I actually AGREE with you that Bush was a radical President though probably not to the same degree as you. However, as I said before, I take a much more nuanced view and am not willing to ascribe every policy or decision to such a simplistic and inherently ideological construct which only results in self-fulfilling analysis where conclusions are predetermined and real evidence unnecessary.
Does anyone else kind of wonder just what Carter did for the several months he was in that neat-sounding, but clearly inconsequential position in DoD? Did anyone see anything with his name on it?
ReplyDeleteMaureen Dowd has a timely op-ed in the NYT concerning the president's way of thanking his supporters: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/opinion
/25dowd.html?emc=eta1
As I've noted previously, I'm beginning to wonder somewhat about this unorthodox and untested dude we elected to the presidency. ISTM he may be taking the old saw about keeping one's friends close, but one's enemies even closer to new a little too much to heart.
A lot of people are wondering if Obama ever heard that other old saying about how you dance with the one who brung you. Or maybe he's adopting the Harry Truman philosophy: if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.
Proofread, damn it!
ReplyDeleteIf you'll just sort of ignore the words "to new" in the fourth sentence in the third paragraph of my latest post, what I wrote might make more sense.
Publius,
ReplyDeleteGood comment. President Obama doesn't come into the job with a lot of management experience and it seems that his advisors and staffers aren't serving him as well as they should be. I think he probably made a mistake by trying to do too much in his first year - all in addition to dealing with the economy, which hasn't really gone too well so far.
My wild gut speculation on Carter is that he's probably falling on his sword because of the failure to close Gitmo this year. I doubt it's Carter's fault, but usually someone has to be sacrificed to provide the illusion of accountability. I guess we'll have to wait and see for the real story.
Well, shit, Andy, maybe we can hire Carter on here. The pay sucks, but the fringes are great.
ReplyDeleteActually, I hope Phil resurfaces and gets back into the fray. His is a voice I miss. Along with that of JD Henderson. I wonder what happened to old JD. I hope he's all right.
Never too many guys like Carter and Henderson.
Gee, I'd like to think he quit because he got tired of working for a war criminal like Gates.... But all I know for sure is that I'd love to debrief him. Maybe he just got fed up with the BS. They've had three task forces going, each of them a joint enterprise between DOJ and DoD. I shudder to think what seven months of that was like.
ReplyDeleteI saw the Greenwald post on PC, and he updated it to specify that Carter's resignation wasn't overtly about any political conflicts he had with the current Administration. He says; "Wired's Noah Shachtman spoke to Carter today and came away convinced that his resignation was not due to policy differences with the administration, for what that's worth."
ReplyDeleteHowever, given the stark contrast between Carter's past statements on POWs/detainees and the policies the Obamites have continued I have a hard time believing that Carter wasn't tired of being the wallflower at the secret policeman's ball. He clearly had no influence, and what fun is it being a bureaucrat if you can't make people do what you want.
I don't have any animus against Obama; I think the man is as genuinely decent as you can be and still get elected to national office. But the notion that electing him was going to produce some magic "change" was always nonsense. He did us the favor of putting rout to McSame and defenestrating the outright and open criminality of the Bushies, but I think it would have taken more than a tyro Senator from Illinois to evict the entrenched corruption, callousness and malfeasance that have taken root within the federal government.
Sorry to say this, but the foxes have the security codes to the henhouse, and Carter is just another vagrant feather from the charnal feast.
Gee FDC, I'm not sure we have much evidence as to how much or how little influence Phil had. He clearly had enough to get appointed.
ReplyDeleteAndy-
ReplyDeleteNice comments and you obviously took time and effort to formulate them. Thanks.
But, oh how far have we strayed from the reservation, sorry about that.
Getting back to your argument however we see that it's actually quite weak.
"Ok, let me lay it out then: Overthrow of the Taliban was inevitable for political and practical reasons."
That's it and whether Bush flip-flopped a hundred times after 2006 or whether Clinton called Mullah Omar every night in 1999 doesn't matter in this context, however interesting those items may be, since neither directly supports your argument. In strategic theory terms we'd say that you got too involved in "local battles" to the detriment of the larger campaign which was lost.
First let's consider the nature of conducting a war for the overthrow of the enemy state, which is the most serious policy making decision - notice the emphasis on POLICY - that a government can make. Prior to Bush's two such wars, the US hadn't conducted such a war since 1943 (Roosevelt's declaration at the Casablanca Conference). In fact most of the wars in US history have been wars of limited objectives. The reason for this is simple, as Clausewitz points out, since such wars require "great superiority in terms of moral and physical resources" and an immense commitment over the long term, essentially the rebuilding of the defeated state along with dealing with other interested states. Our commitment to Roosevelt's declaration of "unconditional surrender" only ended in 1990 with the four plus two agreement and the reunification of Germany.
Bush made his declaration of "Operation Enduring Freedom" on 7 October 2001:
"Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader. Every nation has a choice to make. In this conflict, there is no neutral ground. If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers, themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril."
Overthrow of the Taliban is not explicitly stated, but a warning to other states is! This when, as we know now, the administration was concocting their case against Saddam, who had been a target - perhaps the main target - since at least 12 September.
It is important to note here that when Tony Blair (the UK was the only ally Rumsfeld initially accepted assistance from) came out and explicitly stated that the overthrow of the Taliban was a goal - at the END of October - he was roundly criticized in the UK.
It is also important to note that Bush's own official document on Combating Terrorism - NSPD-9 only directs that planning of "military operations" be initiated against the Taliban and "if diplomatic efforts to do so [gain the desired objectives] failed, to consider additional means".
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-9.htm
So, in the administrations own directives, "additional means" would be "considered" if diplomacy failed. How exactly could the most radical policy option have been the only option both practically and politically when their own documents don't indicate it?
Given Afghanistan's history as "the graveyard of empires" there was opposition to the policy of overthrowing the Taliban from the start, as Bearden's piece indicates. This due to the simple fact that overthrow required long-term commitment (which Bush promptly ignored with his quick refocus on Iraq).
William R. Polk was saying at the time that we should deal with this as a criminal act . . . that is before the Afghan campaign had begun.
http://www.williampolk.com/html/articles_before_2002.html
But there were other voices as well stating that an even more fundamental mistake was being made by Bush, that of language and its misuse/abuse which is the topic of course of this thread . . .
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/michael-howard--it-was-a-terrible-error-to-declare-war-615614.html
Continued . . .
ReplyDeleteSir Michael of course is a translator of On War. I've met him, he signed my copy of On War, and he is someone who should be listened to in regards to the subject of war. He likened bombing Afghan cities in response to terrorist attacks to "going after cancer cells with a blowtorch". He also had a one on one with Condi Rice at this time where he strongly expressed his views, but to sadly no avail.
So, three heavy hitters arguing and providing alternatives to Bush's radical policy. And even this does not exhaust the other options, since the full range of military responses - falling short of overthrowing the Taliban - were still possible as well. What you argue as the "only practical" was actually the least practical option.
Public pressure? The Afghan campaign was taking place during the aftermath of 9/11 and at roughly the same time as the anthrax attacks and the passage of the Patriot Act. People were reeling, unable to focus to a large extent, so there wasn't much pressure from the public for overthrowing the Taliban since people had much more on their minds. In fact if you read the comments after 7 October and into November 2001, the connection with military action in Afghanistan was mostly whether it was or was not already a "quagmire".
So, there were a variety of practical options available to overthrowing the Taliban - as indicated by not only Bush's own directives, but expert opinion at the time - and there was little public pressure on overthrowing the Taliban and taking on a long-term commitment of the sort the most radical policy decision entails . . .
Seydlitz-
ReplyDeleteYou wrote" and there was little public pressure on overthrowing the Taliban and taking on a long-term commitment of the sort the most radical policy decision entails . . .
What did the public know about the ramifications of toppling a government. Most had not even been alive at the time of WWII, and the Occupation is probably the least taught item of history in our civilian schools.
What the public did know was, perhaps Viet Nam and Desert Storm. And in terms of the latter, few if any understood that the objective was simply the liberation of Kuwait, not the toppling of the Iraqi government. Hell, every one of us in CentCom/3rd Army knew that the objective was not the fall of Iraq, and thus we were comfortable with the lack of a Phase IV plan. We also knew that the Muslim states that supported "liberating Kuwait" (and only liberating Kuwait) would have had severe reservations at best, and strong opposition at worst, to the conquest of Iraq. The public, however, was still baffled over our not "carrying the victory all the way to Baghdad" when we had decisively "defeated" the Iraqi forces.
So, when we went into Afghanistan, with a "resounding victory" over Iraq under our belt, the public simply expected "A Victory of American Military Might, Part II". I doubt that most had an inking of the massive resources needed to "Seal the Victory" - Occupation Operations. And, I doubt if Mr Rumsnamara cared to entertain a doctrinally sound Phase IV, as that requires people, not electronic gadgets, and he desperately wanted to shed the former from the payroll to finance the latter.
Of course from a public perception standpoint, as well as Mr Rumsnamara's quest for the low manpower Holy Grail, Iraq was equally conducted in a doctrinally wrong manner. Kick the crap out of the bad guys with American technological "Shock and Awe" and things will be just peachy. Sadly, solid state, very large scale integrated circuits and associated hardware built at great profit by war profiteers cannot conduct Phase IV operations or "Seal the Victory".
So, Mr Rumsnamara proved that ignoring existing Phase IV doctrine was foolishness, and we have spend trillions of dollars as well as thousands of US and tens of thousands of innocent indigenous lives in delivering that proof.
I have said before, and I will say it again, the reason for the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq is three fold:
1. Of the key players in the decision making process, few held the same motives and geopolitical objectives for initiating either war. If you set out to make mankind's most radical policy decision, it must be for a specific reason with a clearly established political objective.
2. Additionally, some of these objectives were not political end states achievable through military means. For example, I am convinced that Rummy's primary objective was a couple of quick and dirty campaigns that would prove his contention that "The Generals" wanted far more personnel in the military than necessary, taking precious dollars away from his desired "toys". That ain't why you go to war.
3. No one in the decision making process understood the scope of responsibilities and necessary actions that a war of conquest requires. As you stated, some 50 years of "limited war" obscured the lessons of WWII. And, as in the case of Eric Shinseki, when someone in uniform would step forward to speak in doctrinally sound terms, they were marginalized and belittled as "weak". During the run up to Iraq, Rummy was able to squeeze out more generals into retirement than at any other time in recent history. You can bet your britches that most of then were supporters of the hard learned doctrine that calls for proper (and manpower intensive) Phase IV operations.
You just don't attempt vast projects with half-vast ideas.
Al-
ReplyDeleteAgree with your three points. And there was absolutely no effort made to educate the American people as to the consequences of these long-term military/political commitments. If fact the assumption seemed to be that the various war interests would simply cash in on the endeavor while the American tax payer footed the bill.
Strategic theory actually allows us to understand the extent of the whole outrage and who to hold accountable for it . . .
A basic fact of life is that if you properly approach the question of war and peace and anticipate realistically the advantages and disadvantages of war, you end up not beginning a war.
ReplyDeleteThat's what we should strive for. And we should drop the idea that an exemplary preparation would end in a victorious war: No failure leads to peace, not war - no matter how victorious.
Sven-
ReplyDeletePlease do not read from my comments that I am a proponent of waging war. That said, if a nation does initiate a war, or has to respond in self-defense to a war initiated by others, then failing to conduct that war in a manner consistent with well learned principles will only result in making what is by my definition, a tragic event even more tragic in the end.
Al, seydlitz, sven: I'm not sure that Rummy's objective was pure technology. Rummy was an old hard-liner, one of the Nixonian global interventionists, and he hated the "Powell Doctrine" with a white-hot fervor. I believe his intent was to reduce the heavy footprint of the conventional force to reproduce the conditions of the 1930's, when Marine expeditionary forces could romp through the Caribbean and nobody would care.
ReplyDeleteHe was a fool: the old days of imperialism lite are dead, and no amount of "lightening" the force or "shock and awe" could change that. All it did was, as you point out, make a genuinely complete geopolitical solution impossible.
But I think Sven has a good point: if the Thrones and Dominations in Washington had done any real IPB they would have realized that the PhIV of the Third Gulf War was both financially ruinous and politically impractical. Both "nations" they planned to thrash were so fragile, politically, socially and economically, that putting humpty dumpty together again would have been a challenge for the U.S. of 1945. For the U.S. of 2005, both internally softer and externally less appreciated? Inconceivable.
But history pretty much shows that this sort of analysis never happens. BOTH sides think they will win - and on their own terms - or there would be no war. The Bushies were foolish to embark on a land war in Asia, but they weren't the first and probably won't be the last.
Charles: All I meant was that whatever has been happening over the past year, Carter appears to have had little or no influence on the Obama Administration's POW/detainee policies. It must have been galling for him, to have had just enough pull to get inside but not enough to make any real difference.
FDC,
ReplyDelete"Charles: All I meant was that whatever has been happening over the past year, Carter appears to have had little or no influence on the Obama Administration's POW / detainee policies. It must have been galling for him, to have had just enough pull to get inside but not enough to make any real difference."
I got that FDC, I just don't see much evidence for your conclusion one way or the other. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that speaking as someone who's had his head shoved deep into this stinking bucket of bullshit from day one, I'm not make any big assumptions. Phil has always been a bit enigmatic and overly-cautious from my perspective, and this whole thing is very opaque. I could read the Bush gang like a book, Obama is a very different guy, and he's delegated this stuff to a committee of subordinates that is heterogeneous where the Bush people were mostly Borg drones. Conditions for the detainees are substantially better, though still far from perfect. Equally, though I don't know him all that well, I do consider him a friend, so I'm going to reserve judgment until I know more. I mostly wish he'd come talk us here or restart Intel Dump and write about it there.
But I'm having a terrible month. I've been trying to write a new amicus brief, ran into shit-storm of computer problems, got it almost ready to go, and finally decided to withdraw it because the attorney wasn't happy with some things and I don't want to be a distraction as his case is very important, and he's a very fine attorney. So I'm a little down and pessimistic right now. The good news is that physically I feel better than I have since last year, and the results of the new MRI on my head were excellent according to my oncologist. Next they will do a PET scan to see how the rest of me is doing, but my blood work is normal and I'm feeling good, so I'm optimistic about that.
Charly
"Al, seydlitz, sven: I'm not sure that Rummy's objective was pure technology. Rummy was an old hard-liner, one of the Nixonian global interventionists, and he hated the "Powell Doctrine" with a white-hot fervor."
ReplyDeleteHere's my understanding (to be honest: it was greatly influenced by a work of IIRC Fred Kaplan):
Technology (the RMA dreams) was merely an enabler to the Neocon crowd. They wanted to re-shape certain parts of the world and RMA promised them quick, cheap and relatively unbloody wars.
Rummy wanted to smash Saddam and get out.
Bush had derided nation-building and the Neocon crowd hated nation-building because Clinton had done it and they hated all that Clinton had done.
So basically they did not expect any post-invasion phase other than victorious withdrawal (remember "Mission Accomplished"?).
Reality caught up, and soon after Baghdad fell reality began to dictate their actions - and it differed a lot from their dreams.
Just lurking here, folks. Y'all are way over my head here. I did, however, want to take note of this: "The good news is that physically I feel better than I have since last year, and the results of the new MRI on my head were excellent according to my oncologist. Next they will do a PET scan to see how the rest of me is doing, but my blood work is normal and I'm feeling good, so I'm optimistic about that."
ReplyDeleteThat's the best news in this excellent thread. And, BTW, Mr. Gittings, I guess I've missed all of those progress reports you were going to send.
Of course, the progress reports aren't needed if you post regularly.
Publius,
ReplyDeleteYa, well, it was kind of a long and tedious grind of endless details and ever-changing symptoms, and you get to where you are tired of thinking about it, talking about it, worrying about it, and being it, so the notion of writing about it too just doesn't have much allure I guess.
But I am feeling better and my weight is back up to 150 from a low of 134 or so. The radiation fatigue was the worst problem and that's almost gone now. The Radiation burns were unpleasant but healed in a couple of weeks.
Charly
Charyly-
ReplyDeleteI would like to add my pleasure with your news as well. Welcome back.
Sven-
ReplyDeleteYou are simply stating my case in different terms. I'll probably need to put this in separate parts (the comments space constraints) so here is Part 1:
My #1 point above was, "Of the key players in the decision making process, few held the same motives and geopolitical objectives for initiating either war.". I'll focus on Iraq, as it is the more clearly and rapidly developed egregious example.
Let's first identify Rummy's Constitutional role as defense minister, as we would say in Europe. His was not to establish the strategic geopolitical objective, but to prosecute the war in a manner that maximized the probability of achieving the Executive's (and hopefully the Congress') strategic geopolitical objective. Let's just say that the most cynical alleged Cheney objective, the overthrow of Saddam's regime and replacement with a puppet regime that would allow US business interests to exploit Iraqi oil, was the "real" geopolitical objective. Nowhere in the halls of military doctrine and history would you find a "quick in and out" as the military means to that geopolitical objective. Further, honest military officers, assuming that their civilian leadership did not want chaos to arise out of the invasion, tried to put forward a Phase IV plan (the politically correct term for "Occupation") and were told by Rummy that he would fire the next guy who brought it up. From the standpoint of the military ethos when I served, Mr Rumsnamara, by his refusal to entertain executing a war plan that had any possibility of meeting even this cynical objective, was simply insubordinate, and more accurately mutinous, by having chosen not to fully obey a lawful order. Yes, he gloriously initiated a war, but he did so only to the extent, and in the manner, that he wished to to do so, not to achieve his leaders' express extent.
Now, having pointed out that Constitutionally, there is no provision for the Secretary of Defense to unilaterally establish strategic geopolitical objectives for our country, we could now search for any articulated objective by an appropriate member of the Executive that could be supported by an "in and out" invasion. GWB did indeed speak in terms of "regime change", "toppling an evil dictator" and "liberating the people of Iraq". One would be hard pressed to find a clear statement of a strategic geopolitical end state (achievable or not) from his words. Those who have read my writings over the past few years know that I suspect that Mr Bush suffers from a form of arrested development. Thus, I do not think he is intellectually capable of establishing strategic geopolitical objectives, no less determining if they are achievable or not. Thus, in addition to whatever Mr Cheney may have had in mind, it is doubtful to me that GWB had anything of enduring practical value in mind to guide our nation in this endeavor. And, we could explore the objectives of other operatives like Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and the like, but space dictates that we simply say that they do seem to be diverse.
Part 2-
ReplyDeleteNow, the confounding factor is that when all is said and done, "Executive Policy" is the sole responsibility of the President. With a President who cannot think for himself, the next best bet is that he will select one of his better adviser's decision as his own and then that becomes the sole "sheet of music" for the execution of the affairs of state. Clearly, this did not happen, as Rummy's actions clearly supported no articulated objective that has surfaced, be they expressed, implied, or alleged. So, at least in the case of the subordinate responsible for the military means to achieving the "objective" not only was he not on the same sheet of music, he continued to march to the beat of his own fiddle for six years. In orchestral terms, the percussion section was ignoring the conductor and playing their favorite sections of the 1812 Overture while everyone else was performing Handel's Water Music.
I'll close with my personal evaluation of what went on. Having been a life long pleasure boater, from a family of boaters, and a Marine, I offer the term "The Helm" for consideration. Even on a vessel with multiple helm stations, only one Helm station is "The Helm" as designated by the Captain and directly controlled by the Captain. Even a helmsman executes his duties under the express and implied orders of the Captain. Further, the engine room, navigator, signal room, galley and other departments take their orders from "The Helm". Thus, you will never hear a seasoned mariner refer to "A Helm". The definite article is used for good reason. A ship that is being directed from multiple helms will go onto the rocks. If someone can show me that our nation had one, and only one helm and or Captain during the eight years of the Bush administration, especially as it pertained to war policy, I'll eat my hat.
Now, as to Rumsnamara's objectives in reducing the manning level of the military, I'm going to start a new thread, as even a brief explanation exceeds the size limits of the "Comments" section.
ReplyDeleteSTANDBY!
Charley-
ReplyDeleteGreat news, my best regards on your continuing recovery.
To all:
This has been a great thread, but since Al has been so kind as to start a new one, let's carry the discussion on over there with his indulgence . . .
Seydlitz,
ReplyDeleteThanks again for the reply.
So, in the administrations own directives, "additional means" would be "considered" if diplomacy failed. How exactly could the most radical policy option have been the only option both practically and politically when their own documents don't indicate it?
Except for two things: First, the NSPD was not specifically about the Taliban. Secondly, as I have pointed out numerous times, diplomatic efforts had, in fact, failed for several years and the Taliban showed no outward signs that their policy regarding AQ would change as a result of 9/11.
Given Afghanistan's history as "the graveyard of empires" there was opposition to the policy of overthrowing the Taliban from the start, as Bearden's piece indicates. This due to the simple fact that overthrow required long-term commitment (which Bush promptly ignored with his quick refocus on Iraq).
Opposition to a COA doesn't automatically mean that other options are superior. Additionally, overthrow doesn’t automatically require a long-term commitment – particularly since the Northern Alliance was all too willing to try to fill any power vacuum. I think the commitment was not intended to be long-term, but became long term due to the failure to get UBL and most of his principle lieutenants. Rember that NATO originally signed on to do the DDR work on the Northern alliance and other militias, provide reconstruction and the UN was going to setup a transitional government. The US was going to primarily focus on AQ. There was certainly a lot of wishful thinking on our part, but I think if UBL and Zawahiri has been killed/captured, we probably wouldn't be in Afghanistan today.
William R. Polk was saying at the time that we should deal with this as a criminal act . . . that is before the Afghan campaign had begun.
Ok, let’s look at what Polk says. He asks, “what can be done?” First, on Usama bin Ladin. We should require that the Afghan government turn him over, as Qadafi did the suspects in the Lockerbie case, to the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
We tried that for several years. It’s worth pointing out that most people at the time didn’t know we tried. The diplomatic history between the Taliban and the Bush and Clinton administrations was not reported in the press until Nov. 2001, IIRC, and then only in general terms. The primary source documents were not released until a few years ago. One wonders if any of these early analyses you cite that place so much emphasis on negotiation and extradition would be any different had the authors known about the previous diplomatic efforts aimed at doing just that.
More Polk:
Then, why not kidnap him and bring him to America as we did Noreiga?
Interesting example for Polk to cite considering that getting Noreiga involved a military invasion and regime change!
Those were Polk’s two alternatives. Michael Howard did not provide any alternatives in the piece you linked beyond the kind of general “root cause,” “hearts and minds” arguments.
part 2:
ReplyDeletePublic pressure?
The pressure was to quickly and decisively finish AQ once and for all after years of escalating attacks and what were perceived as impotent American responses. The pressure was for vengeance and reciprocity. Because of past failures I think the pressure was for a military solution. Addressing “root causes” and covert/police actions would, in my judgment, take too long to satisfy the American public, particularly since previous attempts had failed.
In hindsight, it’s difficult for me to imagine military alternatives that would succeed in targeting AQ and leave the Taliban in control at the same time. After all, the Taliban, AQ and other foreign fighters were fighting together in most places in October and the first half of November 2001. Additionally, the Taliban were not so much overthrown since they fled the field and abandoned Kabul without a fight at all in mid-November – a move which surprised almost everyone. Ironically, it was this Taliban abandonment/rout/overthrow (whatever one wants to call it) that forced AQ to concentrate its forces in several areas (like Tora Bora), thereby allowing us to single them out and go after them – an effort that failed to get the leadership.
And even this does not exhaust the other options, since the full range of military responses - falling short of overthrowing the Taliban - were still possible as well. What you argue as the "only practical" was actually the least practical option.
Ok, at the risk of repeating myself, I’ll ask again, what were these other options? How would those other options materially improve the chance to dismantle AQ’s Taliban-sponsored training capability and kill/capture its leadership? Again, if, with the benefit of hindsight, other options were so clearly superior, it should be easy to describe them and explain why they would have been more successful.
PS,
ReplyDeleteJust saw the request to move the discussion. I'll start reading over in the new thread.
Hey, guys, the new thread has nothing to do with strategy (the objective of this thread) but has to do with force structure, the reasons behind one player's force structure actions and how that force structure philosophy effected the execution of a policy decision. Let's not get off topic on the new thread if we can help it.
ReplyDeleteAl-
ReplyDeleteAgree.
I guess I should have made it clearer.
I've said what I wish to concerning strategy for now. Expect a comment concerning force structure on your thread, but I gotta think about it . . . Cold and wet in the North of Portugal. Home provides a happy sanctuary as the wind outside howls . . .
Tough times ahead.
Andy-
Thanks for your response.