Everything goes in cycles...
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Originally Posted by
Steve the Planner
As the clock ticks down in Afghanistan, I will find it interesting to watch how the emerging redefinition of the military's role to the US government evolves.
That it is evolving is inherent in the COIN approach (at least, as COIN is advertised)...segue to COIN for America.
Even dumb cycles repeat...
From way back (LINK) through then (LINK) 'til this (LINK) -- which I suspect is gone from view but not forgotten and which likely will morph in surprising ways...
Addition to post above...
Thought it worth adding that US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan illustrates the degree to which we've moved beyond Cold War thinking. In the Cold War we'd never have dreamed of holding an election in either place: we'd have cut a deal with some superficially agreeable general or warlord, let them take over (or simply dropped them in the Palace) and proceeded to blindly support them against the inevitable insurgency.
We do things differently now... but the way we do them now hasn't been a resounding success either, a sobering reminder that simply rejecting a policy proven bad is no assurance that the new policy will be better. That's not a reason to stick with ways proven bad, but it suggests that new policies need a careful review with an eye toward real-world constraints.
Some might say that American willingness to engage with authoritarian governments indicates a continued Cold War mentality. I'm not sure that's the case. Authoritarian governments exist, so we deal with them; we've neither the right nor the duty to run about overthrowing or undermining other governments simply because they are autocratic. Our Cold War ways were characterized not by engagement of authoritarian governments, but by promotion and outright creation of authoritarian governments, and by aggressive assistance of authoritarian governments threatened by popular unrest. That trend hasn't been eliminated completely, but it is much less prominent than it once was.
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At the risk of sounding like a supporter for the Foreign Service, the real problems are structural/organizational. There are some bright and dedicated people in the foreign service, but there is a profound inadequacy of "breadth" of experience and training, and much "making it up as they go."... Perhaps more effective to attack the training grounds (foreign service education, poli-sci education) and build incremental change, but there is no apparent shift of attitude there now.
Those people exist, but you have to actively seek them out and recruit them. State doesn't; they limit themselves to people in that "traditional diplomat" mold. I don't think there's a need to revise pol sci education, that skill set is still needed. The need is to supplement the people with that skill set by bringing in a wider variety of skill sets to work along with the traditional diplomats.
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The "whole-of-government" thin, for example, is a race horse designed by committee in lieu of an actual Reconstruction/Stabilization Corps which congress would never actually fund for anything more than an unstaffed "coordinative" role. Whether State could ever properly manage such a task or structure (diplomacy AND development), which is the Congressional concern, is really an academic discussion because it was never funded.
Reconstruction, Stabilization, and Development are clearly outside State's current capacity, suggetsing that we need to wither massively upgrade and redirect the capacity, establish a new agency, or refrain from taking on those tasks. Ideally, of course, such an agency would be multilateral, but there's little chance of that.
One more reason for "FID" over "COIN"
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Originally Posted by
Dayuhan
That's consistent with my observations... and I suspect that the eurocentric culture is going to cause us some problems down the line, not only in matters of stabilization and reconstruction. The rest of the world is becoming ever more significant, Europe is not the center of the universe, and we badly need to develop new peer-to-peer approaches to emerging nations that we once treated as subordinates, threats, or simply as irritations.
The ideal would be a multilateral agency, which could tap a wider range of expertise and avoid much of the baggage associated with direct American involvement... but of course that's even less likely to happen.
That's what State does. I think they could do it a lot better, but that will require new directions from above and a conscious attempt to change the culture within.
State is at least theoretically equipped and tasked to develop and implement foreign policy. The military and to a lesser extent CIA are equipped and tasked to manage CT and COIN. Nobody is equipped and tasked to manage stabilization and reconstruction, so these tasks are simply ignored, or handed off piecemeal to those who have neither the capacity nor the inclination to perform them.
I quite agree with your assessment of local perceptions of the Karzai government, but what to do about that problem remains a problem. Of course we can dump him and bail, but that almsot certainly means the return of the Taliban and of AQ, which would sacrifice the objective of the entire operation.
This just underscores the difficulty of creating and installing governments in other countries. It's exceedingly difficult, and if the first go doesn't work you can't simply dissolve the government you've created and have another go. If it doesn't work as planned it's easy to end up strapped to a government that cannot stand, but which you cannot allow to fall. Bad place to be.
COIN is an effort by a govenment to resolve an insurgency with a hard and fast condition of maintaining the current government in power. When we think we are doing COIN, we too fall into the trap of buying into the condition of maintaining the current government in power. The tactics of "Population-Centric COIN do nothing to alleviate our commitment to that dangerous condition.
FID, on the other hand, creates enough intellectual maneuver room to allow a clearer perspective. When one appreciates that true success in COIN comes from addressing the perceptions of failure on the governments part within critical at risk segments of the populace, the FID actor can be more pragmatic. At the end of the day, the goal of FID is to preserve your national interests in a particular region and ANY government that is willing to work with you on those interests AND is also able to maintain stability among its populace is fine for your ends. This is what my work on Populace-Centric Engagement / Policy is about. It recgonizes our ends are best met by focusing on the needs of the populace, and not the needs of any particular government that happens to be in office.
BLUF: If our current efforts in Afghanistan have somehow morphed to being tied to preserving a particular form of government, or even particular personnel in office, it has become dangerously flawed at a strategic level.
An Italian Afghan expert writes
His viewpoint, afteryears of experience in country:
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The "Peace Jirgah" called by President Karzai convened amidst accusations that the process has being rigged. But rather than dismissing it as another government failure, Carlo Ungaro says it should be seen as an instrument to help reconcile respected and valid Afghan traditions to the country’s aspirations to be part of the modern family of nations.
Link:http://www.opendemocracy.net/carlo-u...ah-way-forward