Reconciliation and COIN in Afghanistan

[Dayuhan]

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.

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.

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.