Strategy in Afghanistan: could the US have done better?

[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?