Strategy in Afghanistan: could the US have done better?
An article from the Journal Strategic Studies, which should be of interest for Afghan campaign veterans and watchers - full edition available on-line - and the actual title is 'Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: US Performance and the Institutional Dimension of Strategy in Afghanistan':http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...Bjarb0.twitter
Quote:
It is not too soon to draw cautionary lessons from the inconclusive results of US performance during more than 11 years of Operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ in Afghanistan. As in Vietnam, fundamental difficulties persist in adapting enduring institutions to the requirements of strategy. At the heart of the matter is tension between the assumptions that underlie counter-insurgency as practiced in Afghanistan and organization of the US Armed Forces, State Department, and Agency for International Development. Knowledge of basic principles and necessary changes is available to answer the question, could the US have done better?
The author is a retired DoS Pol-Mil Officer:
Quote:
Todd Greentree is a member of the Changing Character of War Programme at Oxford University. A former US Foreign Service Officer, his political-military experience in five conflicts began in El Salvador during the early 1980’s. Most recently, he served as Director of the Initiatives Group in Regional Command-South, Kandahar, Afghanistan during 2010-11.
I should have just not posted :)
Half way through my comment I realized I probably misunderstood your point but stupidly posted anyway.
I honestly don't know how some of you do it, keep trying to come up with something useful within a large bureaucracy. I'd go nuts.
Our policy makers, misunderstanding everything, probably will think some time in the future that fighting one of these small will make us safer and you all will be stuck with another thankless task.
Quote:
It is time for FM 3–24 to be deconstructed and put back together in a similar way as the Army’s Active Defense Doctrine was between 1976 and 1982. That previous operational doctrine was thoroughly debated and discussed in open (not closed bureaucratic) forums, and the result of that debate was a better operational doctrine for the time commonly referred to as Airland Battle. In short, FM 3–24 today is the Active Defense Doctrine of 1976; it is incomplete, and the dysfunction of its underlying theory becomes clearer every day. The Army needs a better and more complete operational doctrine for counterinsurgency, one that is less ideological, less driven by think tanks and experts, less influenced by a few clever books and doctoral dissertations on COIN, and less shaped by an artificial history of counterinsurgency. When will the Army undertake a serious revision of this incomplete and misleading doctrine for counterinsurgency?
http://ndupress.ndu.edu/deconstruction-3-24.html
Quote:
In general terms I would deconstruct the manual as it is now and break the singular link that it has with a certain theory of state building (known as population centric COIN). Once broken up I would then rewrite the doctrine from the ground up with three general parts: 1) would be a counterinsurgency approach centered on post-conflict reconstruction; 2) would be a counterinsurgency approach centered around military action to attack insurgent sources of military power (sometimes referred to as counter-terror or CT), but not linked to an endstate of a rebuilt or newly built nation state; 3) would be a counterinsurgency approach -- perhaps call it COIN light -- that would focus largely on Special Forces with some limited conventional army support conducting Foreign Internal Defense (FID).
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts...urgency_manual
I get frustrated because so much of the conversation is about how to build things and there is so little understanding of strategic environments, to the point that the hoariest cliches are believed about regions so no matter what the military does, if it is based on an improper reading of the strategic environment, it will likely fail. This is different than understanding the local cultural customs.
So, it seems that you and I are actually concerned about the same things. I too want more of the kind of discussion in the last link I provided.
PS: The article David posted seemed of that variety of paper that says, "if we just try harder at these same things in the future, we will have a different result." Our system doesn't do certain things very well and it is designed that way. Understanding this and coming up with an operational strategy that recognizes this is important. Instead of focusing on perfection, we should try and focus on something doable.
China might be trying to be a neer peer competitor
I don't think they are close and a lot of the hype and scare mongering is just that, hype and scare mongering, but they are clearly trying to copy the US military in some conventional sense.
Some thoughts on future interventions
Perhaps another argument for having a force capable of independent action with a smaller footprint than a BCT.
Quote:
From the patterns evident in past campaigns lessons to inform the conduct of future missions can be derived. The United States should only intervene when doing so has a reasonable chance of success. When intervention becomes necessary, the White House should seek international approval and operate as part of a coalition or alliance with airpower being its primary contribution. If it must deploy ground troops, it should keep the American footprint small and withdraw forces as soon as possible.
Avoiding the Slippery Slope: Conducting Effective Interventions