I’m watching Rory Stewart’s narration of the life of Lawrence (yes, that Lawrence). On difficult terrain: can’t patrol it with small units, because those units can then be ambushed; can’t garrison it, because units there couldn’t be resupplied. So much of it remains empty, most of the time, “and an empty space on the map is a dangerous thing.”
Tag: insurgency
Message to Exum: Political Endorsement Doesn’t Make it Right
I’ve been following with interest some of the discussion of MGen Michael Flynn’s views on intelligence reform for the ISAF mission in Afghanistan. It revisits the debate on civil-military relations that came up back in September when Flynn’s ISAF boss, General Stanley McChrystal, was publicly lobbying for his population-centric campaign plan before the White House had approved it. It also gets into some of the finer points of intelligence procedures and analysis. Much of the punditry, though, is simply missing the point that there are serious problems with the substance of the report, that go beyond just the relative merits of the fora through which it was publicly released – like how it was prepared, who it’s actually directed at, it’s ultimate impact on the mission, etc. Those problems extend far beyond the issues picked up by US commentators, who appear to be blissfully unaware of the impact on their friends and allies. I’m preparing something in-depth, or at least a bit more thoughtful than this brief missive, but for now, I’ll just draw attention to Andrew Exum’s profoundly misguided view that ex post facto political endorsement of Flynn’s actions somehow cancels out the problems of form that accompany the report’s release.
More to follow.
CNAS and Its Image Problem
Michael Crowley’s piece raised an interesting point about how counterinsurgency thinking is sold and received in Washington, zeroing in on CNAS President John Nagl’s central role in giving it the slick gloss that ensures even skeptics buy into it. Contrast that with CNAS efforts to prove it’s more than just a one-trick pony: CNAS reports on national security issues that have nothing to do with counterinsurgency fail to convince…. indeed, the response to such efforts lies somewhere been patronizing smile and cruel snicker. How to fix it? It probably doesn’t help that CNAS is led by one of the most recognizable faces in what Crowley dubbed the “cult of counterinsurgency.”
I wonder: if Nagl were to be replaced with, say, a scholar or practitioner with broad and fair expertise across the range of security issues – or even with someone who’s a recognized authority on anything but counterinsurgency and counterterrorism – wouldn’t that boost CNAS credibility by visibly redistributing its eggs from one basket to several?
COIN-Love Redux
Alternate title: “why smart people diversify, and why those who don’t go splat face-first into the pavement”. An interesting piece in The New Republic from Senior Editor Michael Crowley, on COIN-love. Crowley writes about how CNAS has staked its claim as guru-central for counterinsurgency, and throws a few subtle barbs about the quality of its salesmanship vice the gloss of its ideas.
Excerpts:
Washington’s current enthusiasm for counterinsurgency is based largely on its apparent success in stabilizing Iraq–even though it’s not clear that the doctrine’s sophisticated tenets deserve all or even most of the credit. Indeed, an argument is brewing in military circles about whether the doctrine’s potential has been oversold. What happens next in Afghanistan could settle it.
and
Though CNAS is loath to be known as a one-trick pony–it recently completed a report encouraging U.S. cooperation with China and runs an energy and climate-based “natural security” program–it is effectively cornering the market on counterinsurgency thought.
and
The stakes for the United States in Afghanistan are enormous. But, in a more parochial sense, so are the stakes for CNAS and what you might call the cult of counterinsurgency.
and
… if Afghanistan doesn’t turn around soon, the Democrats who founded and support CNAS, and who have come to embrace the Petraeus-Nagl view of modern warfare, may find themselves wondering whether it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
Or they could just read some history. Yes, yes, of course I mean Algeria, Malaysia, and Vietnam. But really I mean that decade between the end of the Cold War and 2001 that everyone ignores. You know, the 1990s, the decade that offered reams of lessons learned about civil-military cooperation, good governance, official corruption, armed non-state actors and the like, before we decided to reinvent the wheel – again (Ed’s Note: Gasp… blasphemer!) for Afghanistan and Iraq.
I mean no ill will to the CNAS crowd. A smart and accomplished group of people, just a little too smug, smarmy, and overinflated about their special understanding of the nature of conflict and the poor schmucks who just don’t get it (not to mention their own qualifications for proclaiming how others don’t get it). In my unkinder moments, I think of COIN obsession as the fetish of those waaayyyyy too young for Vietnam and pissed off that they missed such a groovy fight (and the ability to claim a really great soundtrack as their own, in the bargain). Or those dissatisfied with the prohibition on proactively killing things absence of bona fide warfighting that was part and parcel of…. wait for it… peacekeeping. Remember that?
Next time you read a current or ex- military bio that includes the words “fought” or “combat” in relation to service in Bosnia, give it some thought. Only a handful of individuals can actually claim it with integrity, and only if they were in this place, did this, or participated in the rare mission of this kind that actually resulted in a shot fired (there weren’t many). Kosovo was much the same, except for a short bit in 1999, and that was mostly air power at work. Short version: it just wasn’t that kind of intervention. But I’ve been seeing some revisionist verbiage creep into some biographical characterizations of Balkan deployments as late as 2004 and 2005. That, and COIN-fetishization, reinforce a sneaking suspicion that we’re stuck in the midst of a convoluted memory hole and positively deluded about at least two things: the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and of what we think we’ve learned about them and the lessons of “the past”.
Rant over. Go read the rest of Crowley’s article here.
Originally published at CTlab.
Flipping the COIN
Rick “Ozzie” Nelson, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, raises a few interesting points about counterinsurgency and counterterrorism in Afghanistan. “Counterinsurgency doctrine, or COIN,” he writes, “has captured the hearts and minds of many in the D.C. policy community. Upon close inspection, however, it becomes clear that COIN, at least as applied to Afghanistan, is built on a number of shaky assumptions.”
Hmmm, way to take a swipe at CNAS. I especially like this one:
…the COIN framework is built on the larger assumption that eliminating the Taliban and stabilizing Afghanistan is the best use of American resources in the broader effort to combat terrorism. Al Qaeda’s presence in a pre-9/11, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan has convinced many officials that a Taliban takeover would result in al Qaeda’s inevitable return to the state. But al Qaeda already has established itself in Pakistan’s semi-governed spaces. Along with Taliban and other extremist militants, the group enjoys the relative safety of these territories, where Pakistani sovereignty precludes any substantive U.S. ground force. Even if al Qaeda were to reenter Afghanistan sometime in the future, the United States would face the same basic terrorist threats that it does today. Critics will argue that Afghanistan served as a base and planning center for 9/11. True enough; but al Qaeda, in establishing a presence in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen has already developed numerous “safe havens.” In short, our overwhelming focus on Afghanistan fails to serve a more nuanced counterterrorism strategy that acknowledges the many other areas in which al Qaeda operates.
I’ve always maintained that a state-centric approach to networked transnational threats – interventions that focus on fixing weak and failing states – is a fool’s errand. Nelson explains why pretty clearly, I think. Not that states are irrelevant; simply that the way armed non-state actors distribute their resources generally runs counter to – or more precisely flows around – the organization of large footprint missions.
Go read the rest.
MICHAEL A. INNES 