Les Grau Paper on the Soviets Exit From Afghanistan
Les Grau recently put this paper out. Makes an interesting read for today.
Quote:
BREAKING CONTACT WITHOUT LEAVING CHAOS: THE SOVIET WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN
Conclusions:
The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan provides an excellent model for disengagement from direct military involvement in support of an allied government in a counter-insurgency campaign. It demonstrates the need for comprehensive planning encompassing diplomatic, economic and military measures, both during and subsequent to direct military involvement. It underscores the necessity for the host government to become able to function on its own and thes upporting government to continue to provide adequate support subsequent to its departure. It shows how the internal divisions within both the host and supporting government may be almost as lethal as the guerrilla opposition. It clearly shows the necessity for a good advisory and logistics effort following the departure.
One major mistake that the Soviets made was to establish a public timetable for the withdrawal without any proviso for modifying or reversing the withdrawal if the political or military situation drastically changed. This hurt the efforts of the Soviet Union and the DRA to conduct a smooth transfer of authority and withdrawal.
Gates Assures Clinton of Drawdown Plans
27 Washington Post - Gates Assures Clinton of Drawdown Plans by Tom Ricks and Karen DeYoung.
Quote:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he is personally engaged in developing contingency plans for a drawdown of U.S. troops from Iraq and emphasized that those efforts constitute a "priority" for the Pentagon.
"Such planning is indeed taking place with my active involvement as well as that of senior military and civilian officials and our commanders in the field," Gates said in a letter to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). Such preparation for a troop reduction, he said, "is not only appropriate, but essential."
His letter -- delivered by courier to Clinton's office on Wednesday evening -- sought to smooth over a series of tense exchanges between the Democratic presidential front-runner and the Pentagon. After Clinton wrote to Gates in May requesting a briefing on plans for a troop withdrawal, Pentagon policy chief Eric S. Edelman responded with a letter last week accusing her of reinforcing "enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies" by discussing a timetable for withdrawal. Edelman, a career diplomat, moved in 2005 to the Pentagon from the office of Vice President Cheney...
I was indeed thinking in the military sense;
'losses' implying people, terrain or structure. As I mentioned, the former are of little or no concern to them and the latter two they do not possess.
Given your definition of loss, I certainly agree that's fairly universal and not culture specific.
That doesn't change the fact that tactics or techniques that fail to consider the opponents culture are likely to be erroneous or even really bad choices.
For example, I realize you used it only as one simple example but ability to preclude bringing down the electric grid would not impose a loss of any significance at all in Iraq (even aside from the fact that we do not have and will not have the capability to do that, ever. Or that such is not even a concern in Afghanistan, there is no grid). The lack of an overweening bureaucracy and the large number of small, discreet and disparate groups with various goals in a very flexible aggregation -- it is not an organization -- enables another target to be rapidly selected and adjustments to be made.
Thus, in their eyes, inability to impact the grid can actually be an opportunity as resources devoted to that (that's universal for sure; everybody and everything consumes resources of one type or another to some degree) to be shifted to something else. That other target or target grouping may be lesser or more effective in affecting the populace or the media than were attacks on the electrical distribution system. If less, they can rapidly shift; if more they will pile on. Given our heirarchial organization and the excessive bureaucracy that we are forced to endure, our ability to react as flexibly is severely hampered.
My point was that both our culture and theirs must be taken into account in any discussion of what constitutes a loss. In the current case, their flexibility and innovative ability allow them to preclude or even evade losses (your definition). My subsidiary point was that our approaches thus far are the western way of war and regardless of all the experts and scholars who will happily tell you there is no difference in warfare between east and west; there is such a difference. They are fighting their way and we've been fighting ours. I suggest that we are not having much success. We do not have to fight their way; we do have to know how they will fight and what their probable reactions will be to our efforts and it would seem to me that logically, we should tailor what we do to that reality and adjust our strengths to hit their weaknesses. The only way to impose losses you describe on them are to remove their funding -- extremely difficult for many reasons -- or remove the pushers and charismatic leaders. There are a couple of minor things around the edges and we are doing a lot of things to counter those items -- and doing so fairly effectively after a regretful but necessary time to build the required capabilities and obtain the needed intelligence information.
The successes increased when we started getting less concerned about causing losses to the opposition and more concerned about getting into their heads -- attacking their will...
I was indeed thinking in the military sense;
