What will our expedition to Afghanistan teach us?

[Steve Blair]

Nothing we shouldn't have learned from Vietnam, IMO. Or any number of other places. Sadly, I have great faith in the institution's ability to learn exactly nothing lasting from all this (except perhaps the desire to plan for fantasy war).

Sorry if that sounds cynical, but just about everything listed here could have been gleaned from a good review of stuff that came out during and immediately after Vietnam. Or a close reading of the original Small Wars Manual.

As for using nukes...there are other consequences far beyond just the desire to use the big one. I don't consider that a viable option in situations like this...no matter how much Lind may think they're useful.

[jcustis]

2) Set domestic conditions early for a long commitment. COIN takes time, nation building takes longer.

I like this point, and yes, expectations need to be set early, vice trying to manage them later when support, patience, and endurance wanes.

Where again did we turn the corner towards nation-building in AFG? Was it a creep or a sharper turn, because I cannot put my finger on it.

[Firn]

Some quick opinions from an economic and political point of view, Red Rat did anticipate me somewhat:

1) War is still the continuation of politics with the 'intermixation' of military means. The will of the populations, the internal political games by the various actors at home and in the host nation and so forth all play a role.

2) In COIN political and economic and many other non-military means are of considerable importantance but often outside of the direct political control or even influence of the foreign nation. It can be much harder to get a specific job done at all, not to talk about getting it done efficiently. Friction is very high. Once again circumstances matter.

3) The specific political goals set by the political actors, in this case by the foreign nation should of course be determined by the (ultimate) political purpose. The resulting strategy will include in case of war those military means. Shifting the political goals, in this case seemingly from a good beating to nation-building, might not match the long-term political purpose and will of course force big shifts down the command chain and lots of different ressources.

4) Economic, political and social development in the host or occupied nation depends a great deal on the set of circumstances at the start. Simply pumping in money is generally highly inefficient or even counter-productive as it sets the wrong incentives. Amazingly macro 101 gets often ignored and in the case of a big wealthy nation just more money gets thrown at the problem (Karzai ) instead.

5) Not reaching ambitious political goals in a foreign land far away does of course hurt and will have negative consequences but for the big wealthy nation it is nothing vital. Think about potential positive effects, fewer arguments for Tsarnaevs, but especially about opportunity costs and sunk ones. Life will go mostly on as normal (as if it didn't already during the war), sadly not for those who suffered big physical and mental wounds in the war. For pretty much all the rest of the guys at home little will be changed.


*Almost ten years ago I could not believe that a Foreign Policy article (IIRC) did rather favourably compare the chances of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan to the ones in Germany and Japan after the war. The author had clearly no clue of economics. Especially in Germany a lot of technology, human and physical capital was ready to get kickstarted or better to act alone if not suppressed too much. Letting the economic engine get running again was actually are rather easy job compared to building an new working one from the scratch. The political and social foundations were also completely different.

[Red Rat]

Where again did we turn the corner towards nation-building in AFG? Was it a creep or a sharper turn, because I cannot put my finger on it.

If I remember rightly the initial 2001 Bonn Agreement was setting the course towards nation-building, reinforced by the long term approach adopted in the 2002 Tokyo Donor's Conference. Certainly at the beginning of the UK's involvement there was widespread recognition that the UK would be involved for something like 25 years in order to achieve a degree of capacity building. Then as security conditions worsened long-term capacity building appeared to have been increasingly shelved in favour of short-term mitigation measures; we went from a rehabilitation programme to sticking plasters on the patient.

So to answer the question I think we turned the corner away from nation building and that this happened incrementally over the period 2006-9.

[jcustis]

That is an amazingly interesting perspective.

I will bone up on those events and agreements you have referenced. I believe we will require a brutally-honest and transparent post-mortem of the train wreck if we are to pay any honest respect to the dead. I want the responsible actors to be accountable and the history to remain clear.

[Firn]

@Red Rat: I guess you are right. It is important to remember how quickly the enemy has been 'defeated' and a good deal of the beating was given. The policy makers seemed to have turned quickly to nation-building, stating so much in it the Bonn agreement in December 2011.

Now paper is patient as the Germans say and between the saying and the doing lies the sea we Italians all too often state. The big questions are:

1) How shovel ready were the important political and economic projects. Were there enough of them?

2) How much mental effort and ressources were available and were directed towards them?

3) How smartly and efficently were those projects put into practice?

It would be nice to see for example the scorecard of basic physical infrastructure (streets, grids, water, ITC,...) created in the first years in Afghanistan after 9/11. At least that should be relatively easy to evaluate in an objective way.

[Madhu]

Because it was felt early on that "Rumsfeldian transformation" had worked so quickly and brilliantly at toppling the Taliban without the dreaded mass (which, to be fair, was seen as exacerbating Afghan sensibilities, too many troops I mean), attention was turned almost immediately to peace time activities. And, of course, to Iraq.

NATO thought it had got a peacetime nation building activity, so the reliance on 90s era lessons learned, as in "capacity building". But violence didn't stay down so building could not be done. The violence precluded nation building activities so of course one turned away, except, we didn't really, we just added violence to the mix: FM3-24.

Posted at SWJ earlier in the blog section was a piece by the Afghan Analysts Network entitled "Snapshots". From that piece:

2002-2003: Despite some on-going fighting in the Southern part of the country, the resistance was basically deemed to have ended and many countries were not sure of the utility of further international forces.

As the building went on, and attention turned elsewhere, the old neighboring regional and local compulsions slowly re-emerged and the 2009 surge only made the desire to hold onto gains that much stronger by all local and regional partners and adversaries, the entire mad mix of players, good and bad depending on one's point of view.

It is curious. A global war on terror was envisioned but almost no thought was given to the reasons for disorder spilling onto American shores from the region other than, "we need stability." This goes for both Administrations, Bush and Obama, and is embedded in both approaches, the Rumsfeldian and the AfPak strategy. NATO leadership had the same ideas.

That is why I keep asking people to review the history of the American military and its Nato partners in the region going back to the early days of the Cold War. We've been here before when it comes to creating or sustaining armies/intelligence and expecting it all to fit into our larger security paradigms. The late Lt. Col Nathaniel Hoskot is the name to look up on our early involvement in the region and its intellectual residues within the military, etc.

PS: On a certain level, FM 3-24 was simply the militarized version of the basic 2002-2003 understanding and phenomenon of capacity building and stability as a source of security in the region.

I don't know why the idea of capacity building as a deterrent to violence remains so embedded within the institutional mindset. The evidence in Afghanistan doesn't support the conclusion.

[Firn]

Because it was felt early on that "Rumsfeldian transformation" had worked so quickly and brilliantly at toppling the Taliban without the dreaded mass (which, to be fair, was seen as exacerbating Afghan sensibilities, too many troops I mean), attention was turned almost immediately to peace time activities. And, of course, to Iraq.

NATO thought it had got a peacetime nation building activity, so the reliance on 90s era lessons learned, as in "capacity building". But violence didn't stay down so building could not be done.
.

I wonder if the economic emphasis on small government played a role in the lack of quick direct investments in big and small infrastructure. Basically let us first set the proper liberal market and political framework in place to then allow the Afghani economy to flourish. Correct me if I'm wrong on the 'lack' of said investment.

Figuratively spoken, employing quickly hundred thousends of Afghan men with shovels in relative sensible way for a very low wage for American standards on things like road work might have very efficient for the Western taxpayers if nation-building was it indeed. Maybe many thought there was a good amount of time as the peace was secured, so one had not to hurry to get such things underway. I certainly don't know...

[Steve Blair]

That is an amazingly interesting perspective.

I will bone up on those events and agreements you have referenced. I believe we will require a brutally-honest and transparent post-mortem of the train wreck if we are to pay any honest respect to the dead. I want the responsible actors to be accountable and the history to remain clear.

Agree 100%.

[Madhu]

You cannot divorce these lessons from the larger regional competitions. We turned away from nation building because violence increased and it increased for a complicated reasons.

We mistook the idea that our original victory was in any way durable. And a 25 year time span is nonsensical. I'm sorry I'm so adamant on this point but this is the source of so many troubles in Afghanistan and the larger neighborhood; the idea that others won't react to our long term plans because they conflict with local and regional plans.

If this is the lesson learned, that we turned away from nation building and that is the source of our troubles, then I am very afraid the lessons will not help.

Again, sorry to be so troublesome on the matter but it really requires a broader lens.

[Madhu]

That's an interesting thought. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong and it requires both a broad and very detailed lens so this is exactly the conversation that needs to take place?