Strategy in Afghanistan: could the US have done better?

[davidbfpo]

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

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:

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.

[UKInfCoyComd]

David, I can't get that URL to open - is the problem my end?

Thanks.

[davidbfpo]

It maybe, the link is working here; surely not the firewall of officialdom? I shall send a copy so PM sent. Welcome aboard.

[TheCurmudgeon]

This article reinforces my belief that the US military is about to make a mistake by returning to a total emphasis on high intensity conflict (HIC) with the misguided belief that a military trained for HIC can easily be retrained for COIN.

Beyond the somewhat obvious fact that there is no near peer competitor that the US military needs to be prepared to fight, the reality is that small, intrastate wars with a decidedly political slant are more likely to be the type of fight the American civilian leadership will get us in - largely because internal fights that are believed to be (or can be packaged as) wars of democratic liberation and expansion of liberties are the kind of wars the American public will support. We hate dictators and we feel drawn to these fights - it is our duty as the world’s first modern democracy to support others who want to be free.

So the problem is that at least some portion of our military is not organized, equipped, or trained to do this kind of work. We depend on civilians to do too much, particularly since civilians are not willing to join the fight. A military trained and equipped for HIC is not organized or trained to do COIN. Add to this that neither the military nor the civilians are trained to see the world through the eyes of the locals. They will consistently attempt to force American solutions to local problems. What is needed is an expeditionary force that is designed and resourced to conduct these operations. But that is a pipe dream. So I guess I will just wait till the next time we screw things up and attempt to argue that that future war was different from Afghanistan or Vietnam.

[Madhu]

This article reinforces my belief that the US military is about to make a mistake by returning to a total emphasis on high intensity conflict (HIC) with the misguided belief that a military trained for HIC can easily be retrained for COIN.

Beyond the somewhat obvious fact that there is no near peer competitor that the US military needs to be prepared to fight, the reality is that small, intrastate wars with a decidedly political slant are more likely to be the type of fight the American civilian leadership will get us in - largely because internal fights that are believed to be (or can be packaged as) wars of democratic liberation and expansion of liberties are the kind of wars the American public will support. We hate dictators and we feel drawn to these fights - it is our duty as the world’s first modern democracy to support others who want to be free.

So the problem is that at least some portion of our military is not organized, equipped, or trained to do this kind of work. We depend on civilians to do too much, particularly since civilians are not willing to join the fight. A military trained and equipped for HIC is not organized or trained to do COIN. Add to this that neither the military nor the civilians are trained to see the world through the eyes of the locals. They will consistently attempt to force American solutions to local problems. What is needed is an expeditionary force that is designed and resourced to conduct these operations. But that is a pipe dream. So I guess I will just wait till the next time we screw things up and attempt to argue that that future war was different from Afghanistan or Vietnam.

I am flabbergasted at this statement. I am sure that armies trained to fight insurgencies need different skills than HIC but who says there is only one way to fight an insurgency and COIN as envisioned on paper by the American military in FM 3-24 is the only way to do it?

So, instead of thinking of something new you want people to double down on what didn't work in Vietnam and Afghanistan?

We misread the strategic environment in Afghanistan, thought FM 3-24 based on Vietnam and Iraq and colonial small wars and modernization theory would work when there are a million ways to go about countering an insurgency, had overly ambitious goals, got sent off to Iraq in the middle, had a weird relationship with NATO (who was really in charge?) and so on.

What evidence is this based on?

PS: The Army always has to be ready to fight a near peer competitor because that's part of your job too and if you don't think it is, we should just disband you. And, to be honest, I'm not sure even fighting a near peer competitor would out well for us at this point.

Insurgency fighting via expeditionary COIN with the US in the lead has a dismal track record and last time around, the President asked for something else besides pop COIN to work in Afghanistan. He got three pop COIN solutions from the military. That is exactly the opposite of what you are saying. The military was asked for a variety of solutions to a policy and got only one way to do things instead of options.

PPS: Er, am I misunderstanding your point? Why isn't the lesson that we should have tried to train up a security force more quickly and in a better way?

[TheCurmudgeon]

I am flabbergasted at this statement. I am sure that armies trained to fight insurgencies need different skills than HIC but who says there is only one way to fight an insurgency and COIN as envisioned on paper by the American military in FM 3-24 is the only way to do it?

So, instead of thinking of something new you want people to double down on what didn't work in Vietnam and Afghanistan?

We misread the strategic environment in Afghanistan, thought FM 3-24 based on Vietnam and Iraq and colonial small wars and modernization theory would work when there are a million ways to go about countering an insurgency, had overly ambitious goals, got sent off to Iraq in the middle, had a weird relationship with NATO (who was really in charge?) and so on.

What evidence is this based on?

PS: The Army always has to be ready to fight a near peer competitor because that's part of your job too and if you don't think it is, we should just disband you. And, to be honest, I'm not sure even fighting a near peer competitor would out well for us at this point.

Insurgency fighting via third party COIN via the US has a dismal track record and last time around, the President asked for something else besides pop COIN to work in Afghanistan. He got three pop COIN solutions from the military. That is exactly the opposite of what you are saying. The military was asked for a variety of solutions to a policy and got only one way to do things instead of options.

PPS: Er, am I misunderstanding your point?

The short answer is, yes you misunderstand my point. First, let me be clear that the military MUST be capable of conducting HIC. The fact that we are so good at it is part of the reason that there are no near peer competitors. No one sees any possible way to take us on head-to-head so we effectively deter aggression. I am not advancing the idea that we give that up and return to a world where any number of nations feel that using their military to get what they want is a viable option.

No, I am not endorsing COIN as outlined in the FM 5-34. I believe it has some very serious flaws.

What I am saying is that the world has changed. The change is the result of numerous factors from our superiority at HIC, which means that political confrontation now moves from direct conflict to proxy wars; to democracy becoming a more prevalent, if not dominant political system; to the fact that international trade has limited the need for wars of economic gain; to the ubiquity of free flowing commutations. The conflicts of the future will look more like the conflicts of the recent past (40 years) than like the conflicts of the more distant past (41+ years). The military has not cracked the code on this type of conflict with its significantly political nature. The problem is that we do not really want to try. The mistakes we have made in the past will be repeated in the future until we rethink how to organize for a completely different type of fight.

In the not so distant past the US military created Special Forces to help conduct the type of fight I am talking about. What I am advocating is expanding on that concept and create an expanded capability with a specific mission of fighting wars amongst the people. I am not sure that exactly that would look like, but I am fairly certain it does not look like an heavy BCT.