More killing. Less good deeds

[slapout9]

This article (Afghanistan: A White Elephant Called the Ring Road), rolls up a lot of issues about security, roads, and advertised good deeds.

http://www.indepthnews.net/news/news...3:29:19&key2=1

In it, Matt Nasuti, PRT City Management Adviser, argues that the Ring Road is a mess: Poorly conceived, poorly built, and unsecurable. A boon to the Taliban. Too expensive and unnecessary to Afghans at this point in their development.

Moreover, what we learned about the Appalachian Road building projects- a road goes two ways. Built to spur Appalachian internal development, instead, they were the highway for disinvestment: goods flooding in from outside, people flooding out... unintended consequences.

Here, according to the article, the road has been a boon to the Taliban (graft, security fees, free movement of insurgents, fixing our forces to defend it, etc..., and threatens to inundate the local economies with influx of cheap foreign goods.

Sure would be good to think these things through---ahead of time.

I always shudder when I see Loius Berger attached to the planning and implementation of anything.

STP, we talked about that on another thread and that is why I said linking the System togather should be one of the LAST things you do with an unstable system.

[MattC86]

I followed and thought about this thread a lot this summer, and I kept coming back to a fundamental problem with "hearts and minds" - not the pejorative use of the term, but what Uboat earlier described as convincing the population (1) our victory - and thus them helping us - is in their best interests, and (2) we are going to win. This sentiment, first articulated as I heard it by David Kilcullen, is underwritten essentially by rational man theory. People choose from different sets of choices on the basis of what will maximize their utility (serve their interests). Straightforward enough, and it underpins most of classical microeconomics.

Now, as far as sociologists or anthropologists are concerned, I have no idea what the current state of theory is in that realm, but a lot of economics has moved beyond rational man theory, or at least moved into explaining why it fails. Behavioral economics, one of the more recent developments in economics, is in large part devoted to explaining the disparity (albeit still mathematically) between the choices actors make and the choices they SHOULD make. I'm sure MarcT could better explain heuristics and anomalies but these disparities pervade every level of human decision-making, whether it is a person spending his money wisely or the Joint Chiefs assessing U.S. strategy. Obviously, not all choices made by actors are going to actually maximize their utility.

Moreover, our calculations of preferred outcome, especially when viewing this across cultures, are often wrong. Heuristics - experienced based learning - really plays into this. At a micro level, one can see plenty of instances of people refusing the prescribed treatments for the "accidental guerrilla" syndrome, in terms of winning hearts and minds, whether for religious reasons, pashtunwali, or something even less tangible.

Even if we correctly gauge the outcome the people will support, we may make the wrong choice on how to get there. Many commentators have suggested that it was not the staunch commitment of the Bush administration to continuing the mission in Iraq that drove Sunni reversal; but the 2006 elections and the realization that the U.S. may not long stay in Iraq, and that if that withdrawal occurred, the Sunnis were going to be crushed by the Shiite blocs. This unintentional hint of a pending change swayed the perception of interest and optimal outcome.

Of course, "hearts and minds" and rational man theory doesn't have to hold true for everyone, but the implication is that it does have to apply to a majority to work. And I've heard more than a couple economists chuckle about COIN theory banking on what is an in-part discarded model of how people act. . .

Matt

[Ken White]

Of course, "hearts and minds" and rational man theory doesn't have to hold true for everyone, but the implication is that it does have to apply to a majority to work. And I've heard more than a couple economists chuckle about COIN theory banking on what is an in-part discarded model of how people act. . .

A model that never really passed the common sense test at that...

All of us constantly make choices that are not 'in our interest.' Just look at federal elections...

Serious comment. Both parts.

[Steve the Planner]

The purpose of a well-devised planning process is to identify and consider the major consequences (including unintentional ones).

When we end up being the great decider with little input, our decisions, not surprisingly, tend to miss the mark, or spawn significant unconsidered unintended consequences. That's how you get all the waste.

Actually, at MND-North in 2008, the Div Eng (and the whole div staff) had, in effect, stood up the last Diyala govt, and brought with them a lot of built-in knowledge from multiple tours. This cut down on a lot of waste, and led them to ask the right questions, including of local folks.

But it often put them in conflict with the brigade battlespace owner who was trying to build, build, build.

The new SSI guide really gets to the point of how to do it by using the early Basrah example where the military did, in fact, do a pretty good job.

Some really good lessons to learn.

Steve