Before you jump in, you need to know what you are doing
That's what I get from this conversation.
First, you have to ask yourself:
1. What is the most important issue to address for American security?
Then, you have to ask yourself:
2. What should we do about it? (Or is benign neglect an option?)
And, in the process, you need to ask yourself: "what is sustainable," and "what can work given our system of government and our own culture?"
As far as I can see, when it comes to Afghanistan, our security elites first went off to Iraq, and then decided that the lessons it learned regarding countering insurgencies in the midst of the Iraqi civil war would be the main lens through which we would view our mission in Afghanistan. This was our response to 9-11. This doesn't even get into the Saudis and our relationship with them.
We are trying to negotiate a SOFA so that we can keep troops in Afghanistan. Working as a third party has constraints. A plan that doesn't recognize that is not a good plan. Initially, right after 9-11, had we not been diverted to Iraq, maybe an occupation government might have worked for a while.
It will not work now. Bob Jones once suggested (tongue in cheek to make a point, I'm assuming?) arresting Karzai. That will never happen and if we tried now, we'd be facing a NA, warlord and Taliban insurgency. And we'd break the international alliance
Somehow, in response to the Afghan disorder partially created by neighboring intelligence agencies, the US and its allies decided that building a centralized working Afghan government within a ten-to-twenty year window would be our response to 9-11.
We paid a lot money over the years for allies to "do counterinsurgency," and not just in Iraq or Afghanistan. We funded all sides of conflict. Congress only recently cut the funding to some nations but the coindinistas would have funded this supposedly brilliant plan forever, because, uh,"Galula!"
Somehow, the tactics of imperial small wars and the diplomacy of Cold War modernization was supposed to beat back this disorder and convince regional players not to be so naughty.
Quote:
For over a year now, our organization, Shafafiyat at ISAF, has worked with Afghan leaders to reduce the threat that corruption and organized crime present to our shared goals in Afghanistan. From the outset of our efforts, we have engaged continually with representatives from Afghan civil society, with students like you, and with officials from across the Afghan government, to develop a common understanding of the corruption problem—and to frame the problem from the perspective of those who have experienced it—as a basis for shared action and reform. We have been very fortunate to have inspiring partners in this effort who have helped us define, understand, and begin devising solutions to the problem. Afghans have been our teachers, helping us to understand how we can ensure that our development and security efforts are part of the solution, not part of the problem.
- Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster: Anti-corruption speech at American University of Afghanistan
http://www.isaf.nato.int/article/tra...ghanistan.html
Aid is fungible. We have paid for all sides of this conflict for ages. That includes regional nukes, from the 80's onward, the nuclear umbrella under which the disorder is partially being run.
How the American military got to this point will be the subject of historians and scholars for ages and ages. But I fell for some of it early on so I guess I should learn to be little less judgemental.
I posted the following before:
Douglas Porch at bookforum:
http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/015_03/2750
Previously in another thread I mentioned an article by Matthew Cavanaugh, at West Point. The article is in Infinity Journal (and he is a student of Colin Gray's?)
and mentions that like only a few percent of West Point students take an elective in strategy.
https://www.infinityjournal.com/arti..._Adaptability/
I also think that until fairly recently, for the American military, Saudi-US-Israel alliance against Iran and our old security relationships in AfPak from the Soviet times blinded us to alternate narratives. We really believed some strange mythology related to our time in Afghanistan countering the Soviets, or, at least, American military men and women of a certain generation.
State is pretty awful too. One should read some of the late Indian defense analyst B. Raman's writing on the subject of State and its weird clientitis in the region. It's stunning. To back it up with American arguments, you can look at the arguments by John Glenn during the early 90s.
Plus, I am sorry to say, money and the making of it via contracts in DC pretty much runs a lot of our foreign policy and this supports bad military thinking and strategy.
PS: A nice supplement to the Gray article is the interview by Harry Summers I have been posting around here:
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/con.../summers2.html
Sorry my comments are so disjointed, I'm in a rush. I may clean them up later.
Critics gone wild: COIN as the root of all evil
A lengthy review by David Ucko of Porch's book alongside Gina Gentile's 'Wrong Turn' by David Ucko, which in places is very critical. Deserves a longer read, maybe even printing off:http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/1...18.2014.893972
It also provides a glimpse into david Ucko's own book, which has been reviewed on SWJ.
The review appears in the journal Small Wars & Insurgencies and is not behind a paywall.