Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS.
Dr. Andrew Bacevich has been working overtime lately, with yesterday's Los Angeles Times op-ed and an "appreciation of Graham Greene" piece in the new issue of World Affairs. The Graham Greene article is Bacevich at his best and most biting, but I was thinking about a lot about his op-ed. I don't have time to address everything there (like the questionable historic implication that the British would have been better off abandoning World War I) but wanted to raise one point that's bothered me for a long time. Bacevich recommends:
"...forget the Bush Doctrine of preventive war: no more wars of choice; henceforth only wars of necessity. The United States will use force only as a last resort and even then only when genuinely vital interests are at stake."
So how do you tell a "war of choice" from a "war of necessity?" That's entirely dependent on your definition of "last resort" and "genuinely vital interests," and I think there's a legitimate debate to be had on both. Let's not forget that most Americans probably would have called the Afghan war a "necessity" not long ago, even though we might have continued to try negotiating for the Taliban to hand over bin Laden. Even in the seemingly clear-cut case of the invasion of Iraq, there was at least a substantial portion of Americans who would have called that war a "necessity" too. Go further back to the 1991 Gulf War, which is commonly thought of now as a clear-cut war of necessity (Richard Haass has just written an entire book about this), and you'll find that many people considered it a bad war of choice at the time, arguing that we needed to give sanctions and diplomacy more time to work. I've never found the "war of necessity/war of choice" dichotomy useful, because the relative prioritization of "vital interests" is always subject to change depending on who is defining them and one can argue either way whether we've really reached the "last resort" at any given time. The difference may be clear in hindsight but rarely so when decisions are actually being made. That's not meant as a justification for any war, just a suggestion that maintaining a strict Powell Doctrine-style security strategy is not as simple as I think Bacevich makes it out to be.
I think we (as a society, really) have a tendency to try to distill things down to bite-sized soundbites/ideas that are very easy to digest. While there is a legitimate idea hidden in the choice/necessity dichotomy, it's just not that simple. Very little in the world (especially that of international relations) is. The world is shades of gray, but shades of gray are hard to talk about. Most people like to have an easy black-and-white explanation for things. There's nothing wrong with that, really.
In the end, if one strays too far into seeing everything in shades of gray, it's hard to get anything accomplished; you'll just debate a point endlessly. And with the ADD news cycle and attention span that most people have these days (not to criticize, I suffer from it as much as the next guy), nobody wants to hear an endless debate about just how necessary OEF, OIF, or Desert Storm was. It is easier to go with the general consensus that OEF and Desert Storm were wars of necessity and OIF was a war of choice. For the most part, that evaluation fits. One would hope that at the top levels of government, people look past the soundbites and quick-and-easy theories that are offered up every day by political scientists anyway. Use them, sure, but don't rely on them.
BulliedPulpit
Ex has mentioned this before, and its the problem I have with this op-ed.... what are Bacevich's recommendations for moving forward in Afghanistan? Where are his alternative strategies? It appears he thinks we should do our best to leave as soon as possible, or at least work a policy with the resources at hand, but goes no further than to hint at that.
"the Long War may be long, but it should not get any bigger."
Bacevich also states there needs to be alternatives to an Afghanistan "Surge", but doesn't provide any himself. Only recommendations about the principles those alternatives need to be based upon.
I have no problem with people being skeptical of COIN strategies, but please COINTRAS, develop a competing strategy or two of your own so a real debate can begin instead of the mantra 'COIN porponents think it's a cure all for the types of conflict the U.S. is fighting, and a strategy can't be a cure all'.
"Third, no more crusades unless the American people buy in; expecting a relative handful of soldiers to carry the load while the rest of the country binges on consumption is unconscionable. At a minimum, the generation that opts for war should pay for it through higher taxes rather than foisting a burden of debt onto their grandchildren."
I especially liked the above quote, which is how it damn well should have been. Want America to not go to war? The answer generally lies in actually making people pay for the war they support so emphatically. Aside from a draft, having Americans directly fund a war their elected representatives started would make damn sure that the war in question is one of necessity. You think Iraq has WMDs and you feel threatened by it? Well, since you have no kids in the military, have a tax increase to pay for protracted operations. You think Abrams are cheap?
Although I think Bacevich is fundamentally incorrect on a few issues, when put into a different context (grand strategy not relating to the military's current use of COIN), the man, for lack of a better phrase, is so money. I am starting to feel that Bacevich and the COINsters are talking past each other. Bacevich generally speaks to the larger strategic issues, while the COINsters talk about employing COIN because the military has used other methods both unsuccessfully and counterproductively, and for the reason that the US military does NOT have the option to just close up shop and leave. It's as if Bacevich is speaking to the politicians (where and when the military is employed), while the COINsters are speaking primarily to the military (how the military should pursue operations when deployed). Now that is of course a gross oversimplification, but I feel it's quite true. Organizations like CNAS seem to be blurring the lines between supporting COIN in the military and political spheres, but the fight to employ COIN has long been an uphill struggle and it still needs its proponents to ensure, as Mr. Nagl has harped on extensively, that COIN isn't relegated to a footnote in history.
“Yet there is no czar for strategy. This most crucial portfolio remains unassigned. That's unacceptable. Obama needs to appoint someone to fill the position -- or he could claim it for himself.”
Robert Greene, anyone?
I am really liking this Bacevich fellow the more I get to read of him.
It seems that the key difference between a war of choice versus a war of necessity is whether or not you win it.
Bacevich is truly a man suited to follow other visionaries like Col John Boyd.
Ibn Muqawama says "So how do you tell a "war of choice" from a "war of necessity?" That's entirely dependent on your definition of "last resort" and "genuinely vital interests," and I think there's a legitimate debate to be had on both."
WRONG. It's really easy to tell a war of choice from a war of necessity. When the US government invades another country on the pretext of preventing said country from developing WMDs and giving them to terrorists, that's a war of choice. It's really simple. Bush had the choice of waiting for the UN inspectors to do their jobs that they started in Jan 03. Instead he decided (see, there's the CHOICE thing) to invade and overthrow a regime without planning for the post-conflict operations. A war of necessity is when a country hits YOU first and you're concerned about matters of surviving as a nation, say like WW2. Other wars of necessity are when you promised a small nation that you'd cover them if attacked, say like Vietnam, and even then we had choices.
Afghanistan wasn't a war of necessity, it was a war of revenge. I fully supported it, having been in the Pentagon between 2000-2003. But I was not under any illusion that it was a war of revenge and not a war of necessity. Afghanistan wasn't the target, it was because the Taliban wouldn't give up the AQ gang, so it was a policy decision - a choice - to go in and spank them hard. But there are always costs to wars of choice, and that's what Bacevich is pointing out. Before Bush 43, we would have never even had this discussion. It was really clear what wars in which we should and should not be engaged.
Unless our homeland is attacked or our allies attacked, there is always a choice. That's why we need the grand strategy that Bacevich outlines and that CNAS just doesn't grok.
@Deus Ex -
Didn't you get the memo? ROE here are that you are not allowed to like or agree with Bacevich.
A war of necessity is the American war in the Pacific against the Japanese. The Israelis versus the Arabs in 1973 (from the Israeli point of view). The Allies versus the Germans on the Western Front. The Russians versus the Germans on the Eastern Front.
A war of choice is just about anything else of importance this century.
Bacevich tackles the evolution of the Powell and other doctrines and then its corruption by Powell himself among others in "The New American Militarism" (2005).
Johnny Rico: Sigh. This blog has always appreciated contrarian arguments. Your continued efforts to portray it as a echo-chamber are silly. Anyways, I do believe Bachevich is in tune with Kilcullen and others in pointing out the fundamental aspect of COIN: That it has emerged as an answer to a screwedup previous policy. The current COIN paradigm is about damagelimitation, not about establishing a neo-colonial model for future use. It came about due to the missing phase IV in Iraq, and has to be tried now in Afghan because it wasnt tried in 2002 when it would have had an extremely higher chance of succeeding.
Fnord, I disagree with your characterization of US Coin.
No, the current Coin Paradigm is about coming up with a palatable operational method the ostensibly is hearts and minds and progress but is actually nothing more than a vehicle to allow long term presence of American combat power on the ground in the world's troubled spots. A historical comparison would be the French Oil Spot method (which is essentially FM 3-24) under Gallieni and Lyuatey in places like Morocco in the early 1900s. The Oil Spot method briefed well to home politics over the very contentious issue of imperialism because it implied progressive, positive development. However, on the ground it was about occupation through the brute force of military power. Tell me how Astan today is really different from that?
Mr. Gentile,
Sir, these are some of your harshest words yet regarding COIN. They are so harsh they almost sound conspiratorial in nature. I'm not offended in the least, just slightly puzzled.
"Nothing more than a vehicle to allow long term presence of American combat power on the ground in the world's troubled spots." Oh my god, sir. Or maybe COIN is the manifestation of a failed American effort to keep multiple areas of the world that American politicians deemed worth invading and occupying peaceful. We had a failing effort that resulted in horrendous casualties- both military and civilian. Maybe COIN was the best attempt made (thus far) to lower our troop casualties, while seeking to stem the bleeding out of an Iraqi society. Maybe COIN had little do to with stemming the loss of casualties, it is a possibility I must concede given correlation not equaling causation, but putting what available knowledge I have together, and knowing that events do not occur in a vacuum, COIN (and all the things that went with it, including taking advantage of new alliances) seems to have done the trick.
COIN in Iraq doesn't "imply" progressive, positive development, it WAS progressive, positive development. Not permanent development, I would hastily add, but development from a looming failure nonetheless.
Tell you how Astan today is different than French imperialism in Morocco? Well, the moral factors for being there are certainly quite different. And, I may very well be wrong here, but I doubt the order of the day in Afghanistan is occupation through brute force, considering the renewed emphasis McChrystal has put on protecting the civilians, rather than chasing Terry Taliban about the mountains. We aren’t the Romans. But this may very well be an area in which I don’t have the prerequisite knowledge, especially given what I have heard about the still heavy emphasis on kinetic operations going on in Iraq (according to SNLII and a few others).
These words of yours seem far out of line with what I am accustomed to hearing from you: our current understanding of COIN may be too dogmatic in composition (Agreed, but if what SNLII says regarding modern tactics in Iraq is true, then isn’t the military not guilty of being dogmatic adherents?), that COIN wasn’t the dominant reason Iraq changed so greatly (agreed), that COIN is making our military far less capable of fighting large scale, “conventional” wars (disagree), etc. If I misconstrued any of your arguments, it was unintentional. Any error is simply a misunderstanding on my part.
Gian, whatever the weaknesses of pop-centric COIN, I think characterizing it as "ostensibly" hearts and mind and "actually nothing more than a vehicle to allow long term presence of American combat power on the ground" is stretching your critique well past breaking point.
Long-term presence may well be an implication of some elements of COIN strategy but certainly not others, which emphasize a less provocative footprint and a transition to host country security.
More to the point, "ostensibly" and "nothing more" imply as motive a degree of deliberate grand strategic subterfuge which I don't think is at all the case. Had it been, COIN doctrine would be about engendering dependency in fragile regimes rather than seeking to attenuate it.
RB,
Thank you for bringing up a salient point missing in my argument: that if COIN were really a "vehicle to allow long term presence of American combat power on the ground", then why does COIN in both Iraq and Afghanistan put tremendous emphasis on transitioning to a competent indigenous security force?
RB, you're far more succinct writer than I am, and I thank you for it. We said nearly the same things, but one of us (take a guess) babbled incoherently for a while before he reached his points.
Only a fool wages "limited warfare" and only a fool negotiates with assholes like the talliwhakers. They are absolutists and as such, negotiating with them is a waste of time.
Whenever "diplomacy" "negotiation" and "compromise" are used by the USA we lose a little more of our country, strength, and position. In some cases we lose our freedoms. Such as what is happening today.
When The "diplomatic" option is used with the Islamic fundamentalists we lose. Due to the fact that we are "negotiating" from a position of weakness that does not exist by cowards who have no balls.
Only a fool wages "limited warfare" and only a fool negotiates with assholes like the talliwhakers. They are absolutists and as such, negotiating with them is a waste of time.
Whenever "diplomacy" "negotiation" and "compromise" are used by the USA we lose a little more of our country, strength, and position. In some cases we lose our freedoms. Such as what is happening today.
When The "diplomatic" option is used with the Islamic fundamentalists we lose. Due to the fact that we are "negotiating" from a position of weakness that does not exist by cowards who have no balls.
Gentile: Its a point most of my radical friends would agree with you on, and it may be true. Its what I termed the COINquistador line of critiscism, that this is a model for neo-colonial adventures and/or extended "stability-ops". I would however point out two issues that seem to indicate that this is not a correct critiscism: 1 The withdrawal from Iraq wich is starting now and will in two years time be so complete that the Iraqi government will be subsequently free to expel the advisors if they so choose. And 2: A pure cost-benefit analysis of the Afghan situation indicates to me that the Af/Pak war is not about establishing a new geo-political foothold in Afghanistan stretching into the `stans (as Rumsfeld obviously planned) and is currently about stabilizing the Af/Pak situation to an extent that a similar withdrawal can be carried out. I admit that this may be naive on my part, but I just cant see any possibility of Afghanistan becoming in any sort a semi-colony of the US, quite simply because it would cost a hell of a lot more than it would gain. From my pov, it still seems like COIN is a organic practical response to the situation Rumsfeld and the holistic "build it and they will come"-folks at AEI has put the nation (and NATO) in. I am, however, open for the possibility that I am wrong. Would love to hear you lay out the arguments for such a Grand Strategy.
ANother reading of your comments is that the US is basically training to replace the UN. I still fail to see any economic fundament for such a fear. Once the Af/Pak situation is (hopefully) under some sort of control, I fail to see how the US will be able to afford any more such gigantic projects as the Rumsfeld doctrine of democracy through the gun. Again, I would love to hear scenarioes.
"Due to the fact that we are "negotiating" from a position of weakness that does not exist by cowards who have no balls."
Thats an intersting take on Petraeus and Mc Chrystal, "visitor".
@Fnord -
Geez, and I thought we were becoming friends. Weren't you just starting to agree with me last week?
I was just kidding about this site's ROE regarding Bacevich. I'm glad Deus Ex and others are starting to catch on.
As far as contrarian points of view, I would be playing third or fourth fiddle at best. This site is already lucky to have Col. Gentile and SNLII.
The reality is that the "contrarian" view here is quickly becoming common wisdom. It will happen even faster as Astan dissolves into a clusterfuck. 15 dead already this month. Well on track to 60. That'll be a record and in the Iraq, pre-2007 range.
That does NOT reflect on Petraus as he is a soldier who must follow the orders he is given.
I do think that Astan is playing out as the use of brute military force that is made palatable by the Coin paradigm which is ostensibly about hearts and minds and more on the use of persuasion rather than coercion. The underpinnings of the current Coin paradigm are flawed historical understandings of past coin campaigns. The British in Malaya is the classic one that is used to show how hearts and minds approach--or pop centric coin--can win against an insurgency. The story goes that the British were failing at coercion until Templer arrives who radically alters course and shifts to classic coin which is what wins. Actually, the insurgency's back was broken between 1949-1951 using mostly military force in the destruction of the insurgents. It was those earlier actions that allowed Templer to come in and then put his hearts and minds methods in place. The ostensible reason for British success was Templer and hearts and minds, but the actual reason was military force. The same can be argued about the Surge in Iraq. It was not additional brigades practicing new and better Coin methods under inspired new leadership. Rather it was the conditions that wrapped around the additional brigades--like the Anbar awakening and the sois--that provided critical human intelligence which thus allowed for the reduction of al queda through brute military force and the application of firepower. The additional brigades certainly sped that process up and one can credit the combat outfits on the ground for the superb execution of it, but the notion that it was hearts and minds via FM 3-24 at work that broke al queda's back because it won over the population is wrong. Hence my argument about the notion of hearts and minds being ostensible.
Wars are always labeled, named, and coded as they proceed and this one is no different. The driving theme of this war is Coin hearts and minds and the idea that the way it is executed is more humanitarian and progressive because it looks to protect civilians and build nations to better people’s lives. Is that what is actually happening on the ground now in Astan? Would the Astan people agree with that assessment? Is that what happened in Iraq? Would Iraqis agree with that assessment?
Fnord you make a good point about Iraq and what certainly seems to be the eventual pull out of American troops. But interestingly the narrative of success in Iraq—which is premised on the hearts and minds method of pop centric coin--is being used to buttress continuing involvement in Afghanistan, and perhaps who knows where else in the future .
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J. Rico: If you dont mean it, why write it? As for the death-count, of course you are right. This is an offensive, no? I have still to see anyone showing an alternative way (except the Sri Lankan/Roman option, wich would require a doubling of troops) of un-fcking the situation. There will be casualties. ANd to come clear, Im not exactly a fanboy of the current surge myself, mostly because it seems to hasty and lacks the infrastructural basis for it to succeed. In my opinion, the surge should have gone mainly to holding and developin already existing zones of control until we had a freaking infrastructure up and running that could then be gradually exported into the contested areas.
"Visitor" : Ah, its all Obamas fault? So you are implying that gen Petraeus is not pro COIN? Man, he made the doctrine! Its his baby, for better or worse. You keep on confusing the Taleban with some monolithic islamist bogyman of your own invention, methinks.
"If you dont mean it, why write it?"
I did mean it. But it was a joke. I was just thinking you maybe didn't catch it. Are you English or Canadian or something?
Johnny Rico,
I appreciate the condescension. Really, I do.
I am not "catching on." My views have remained relatively the same for the last 6 or so months. I gain new insights, view things in new ways, bla bla bla, but my views have not come close to radically shifting in the last 5-6 months. I never agreed with the premise that the surge/COIN practices were the main reason we started to have a modicum of peace. No, I long have agreed with the idea that the (albeit temporary?) alliance with the Sunnis and that scumbug, Muq Al Sadr, are the main reasons why violence decreased as it did. But I also realize that those might not have been possible without our shift in strategy. I have always, as Mr. Bacevich posits, thought that the war in Iraq was extremely foolish. Ask me that back in 2005, and I'd give you the same response. I wholly support COIN, yet can agree that Iraq was an exorbitantly counterproductive venture. The two are not mutually exclusive. I have also realized that COIN is a very expensive undertaking, and that in the future the US would be wise to avoid it. Mr. Bacevich didn't just pop on the scene in the last few weeks and win me over.
Mr. Gentile,
Say, for the sake of discussion (a phrase I try to avoid), that America late in the Vietnam war made a wholesale shift in strategy and ended up employing COIN, which resulted in a strong South Vietnam that had a capable military and was able to eventually defend itself from a weaker and weaker NVA and a near-extinct VC. If that had occurred, would you reason that it was the "conventional" tactics that had won the war before COIN was employed? Given what little I have read of the conflict in Malaysia, I'm still pretty sure there are a great many people who would directly contest your position that the heavy kinetic operations were what broke the back of the insurgency (could you please recommend a few books that back your claim?). I recall reading about useless sweeps of the jungle involving large troop formations in hammer + anvil operations (which Vietnam was soon to have the pleasure of experiencing).
And, if you would be so kind as to respond to this lengthy query (an honor I probably neither deserve nor will get), could you expound upon what America should have done differently during Vietnam in order to obtain victory (some say COIN, but I doubt you would say the same...)? The COINquistadors have made quite a few recommendations on what should have been done during Vietnam, but those who have stood against COIN have made no recommendations (that I am aware of) for what could have rectified the war in Vietnam.
"I have still to see anyone showing an alternative way (except the Sri Lankan/Roman option, wich would require a doubling of troops) of un-fcking the situation. "
-Fnord
Jesus H Christ, THIS is what I have been saying even since the debate on COIN began. If COIN is so dogmatic, evil, counterproductive, detrimental, or whatever pejorative term you can think of, please tell me what should be done instead. Critics of COIN generally proffer two recommendations: "pack up and leave," or "less touchy-feelie, more bullets, more bang." Neither exactly could be implemented into strategy. I want clear recommendations on an alternate method of both stabilizing a country and transitioning to a sound indigenous security force. Seriously, I AM ALL EARS.
And Fnord, I disagree with your short assessment of the Roman Option (sounds kinda cool, actually), because it is 100% not feasible, and I don't care if you quadruple the number of troops. We do not have the "luxury" of being able to kill 1/10 people in a village if an IED detonates as a patrol rolls through. We do not have the "luxury" of indiscriminately leveling half a town with artillery. And please, no one say "Fallujah," as the military did a great deal to ensure that a huge mass of civilians were cleared from the city beforehand. Nor did we intentionally target civilians in Fallujah. Those "luxuries" are not afforded to any western nation.
"I appreciate the condescension."
Dude, chill. It wasn't condescention, it was an emotion. Maybe happiness. Go see a movie or something.
Maybe "The Hurt Locker." Only half-a-mil at the box office so far, but it is still in limited release. It expands this Friday. Shot in Jordan by a 57-year-old woman with four handhelds. This is weird, since this is the second feature shot by a woman with handhelds about Iraq that rates in the top 5.
The Hurt Locker is across the board praised by critics. I've seen it twice. (I pirated a DVD from the European release). It is about Iraq circa 2004/2005. Not your typical war movie. It is about the insurgency. It is about America and Americans. It moves to the top of my "Johnny Rico's Best War Movies of All Times" behind Paths of Glory, Hell is for Heroes, Full Metal Jacket and Apox Now.
Trust me, you'll like it. It was so good, since I saw it two weeks ago, I've searched out and watched every movie Kathryn Bigelow has made. I watched K-19: Widowmaker for the second time today. Good shit.
[Hey Ibn Mook: Whatup with no obit for Robert McNamara? Not as cool as Michael Jackson, granted, but certainly top 10 in history for mass-murderers. Figured some of the readership here (like one recent "Visitor" already have shrines setup). Anyone who has seen "The Fog of War" knows that piece of shit never apologized for anything. he lived to the ripe old age of 93. Madoff got a much worse sentence.]
Deus Ex:
Sure; go to the special issue of this month of the Journal of Strategic Studies where the entire issue is directed at challenging the Malaya Coin paradigm. If you dont have access to a library portal, I would be happy to send you a digital copy of a few of the essays that support my point.
I didnt mean to say the "conventional tactics" broke the back of the Malayan insurgency. Instead it was early and forceful use of military power combined with a huge resettlement program that did it. The later phases of Templer's hearts and minds and the use of persuasion certainly helped, but the use of overwhelming military force early on combined with resettlement did it. Newer scholarship of the type I mention above looks at Malayan communist sources to prove this.
As to your counterfactual on Vietnam; well sure, Ok, I would agree. But it really is a fantastic what if.
The bottom line to the Vietnam War that should be always remembered by the coin crowd who still think that better coin tactics could have won it is historian George Herring's conclusion that based on the amount of resources and will that the Americans were willing to commit, and based on the huge amounts that the other side did, the war was unwinnable. Once that premise is accepted it is fine to study, analyze, interpret what happened and why. But so much of the Vietnam secondary literature is infused with the Coin premise that it could have been won if, if, the US would have done Galula there sooner and better. Hokum. How does Westmoreland do Galula in 65 while he is staring down close to a combined strength of 200,000 regular NVA and south vietnamese communist forces inside the south that were organized as regular forces? Bernard Fall once commented that pound for pound, they were the best light infantry fighting force in the world at the time. And the notion ala Sorley and Nagl and Krepinevich that there was a radical shift between Westmoreland and his relief, Abrams; also Hokum. Abrams shifted to pacification as a priority after Tet because Tet broke the back of the south vietnamese communist regular forces which made it possible for him to do so. Moreover Abrams continued many of the same tactics of "conventional operations" that Westmoreland used. At certain points after 1968 Abrams was using just as much artillery as Westmoreland. Abrams used to like to quip that the B52s were his strategic reserve.
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Johnny Rico:
Totally Hell is for Heroes is one of the best! I love the scene when Reese (steve mcqueen) is in the foxhole by himself with his little friends the grease gun and a few hand grenades by his side. And the early Bob Newhart one-sided telephone con rif; forget about it!!
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Does Bacevich write things anymore when you can't predict what he will say before you read the article?
It's a fabulous movie, primarily because it deals strictly on the squad level. Besides having Steve.
I recommend "Men without Beards.' It's a book. By John Matheson. Same guy that wrote "The Last Man on Earth." which was made into a bad Hollywood movie starring Will Smith. It's also the predecessor of the classic/moder-day zombie vampire flick. He also wroe some of the classic Twilight Zone episodes.
Men without Beards is perhaps one of the best WWII books ever written next to Catch-22. It is about a rifle squad circa 1944 on the Ziegfried Line. If my history is correct. He was there as a young private.
Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" is much the same only deals with a three-man EOD squad. As you and the rest of this blog are tuned in, I'm sure everybody will be seeing this soon. If you can't wait for a theatre, it is on mininova in DVD form.
"Does Bacevich write things anymore when you can't predict what he will say before you read the article?"
Yes. But this requires a library card or twenty dollars. Since none of his articles are printed in his books.
I took the hard, expensive route. I went to BU. It was worth it, jackass.
I don't know why Ibn Muqawama has a hard time understanding Bacevich or in sorting out wars of choice and wars of necessity. The differences have been pointed out very well; IMO, it's should be intuitive to military professionals and to students of history. The real problem with wars of choice is that they are inevitably conducted half-heartedly and end up costing much blood and treasure for very little gain. And that is exactly what is now happening. How or why anyone believes that combatting a polyglot of terrorists cum "insurgents" in static theaters will do anything to secure the United States from the threat of terrorism is beyond me. Nineteen guys with boxcutters brought this nation to its knees. Does anybody truly think that the lives lost and the dollars spent in the past eight years overseas have done anything to prevent another terrorist attack on U.S. soil?
Bacevich says it. A lot us say it. There is no grand strategy at play here. Our government is driven by tactical and operational concerns and is essentially making it up on the fly. All we need now is Obama sitting in the White House approving tactical targets a la Lyndon Johnson.
COIN is a chimera. As Gian Gentile notes, as practiced by our government, it is merely a subterfuge to put U.S. forces on the ground in troubled areas, based on the questionable premise that somehow massive troop presence equates to enhanced security for the U.S. We tried that in Vietnam—and anyone who thinks that COIN wasn't part of the deal doesn't know history—but we learned that herding cats is still herding cats. I have said this before and I will say it again: we are conflating counterterrorism with COIN, to our detriment. Our Founders were "insurgents." We venerate them. Insurgents are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong. Terrorists are never in the right. We should always endeavor to treat terrorists as the criminals they are, but we run the risk of grave wrong when we support corrupt governments against their own people. This is the ultimate dichotomy of COIN: there aren't too many "moral equivalents of the founding fathers" ; support to weak and corrupt governments can result in serious blowback.
I agree with the comment that Bacevich is toxic to the COINdinistas and I give Ibn Muqawama high marks for linking to his intelligent discourse, while likely knowing that everyone would come out of the woodwork to refute him. Gian Gentile is another guy like Bacevich. Gentile is a historian and a proven combat commander, a rare resource, much like Bacevich, yet the COIN community persists in denying the essential truth of what they say. One truly wonders how they will react if the only insurgency we should care about, the one where the American people finally say "enough," comes to pass.
Robert Strange McNamara died today, at the ripe old age of 93. He was instrumental in denying such a long life to a lot of young men, many of whom I knew. Check what he had to say later about wars of choice and COIN.
Colonel -
I'm quite impressed. Most people haven't seen the movie. You are the only one I've ever known who remembered McQueen's name was Reese.
And forgive me for saying this, but: Reese was the first suicide bomber.
tell it like it is publius.
"The real problem with wars of choice is that they are inevitably conducted half-heartedly and end up costing much blood and treasure for very little gain." - they also tend to generate opponents who conduct wholehearted resistance.
@Publius -
Word.
Mr. Gentile,
Sir, thank you for your thorough response. If I cannot find a way to access that journal, I will shoot you an email. I greatly appreciate the kind offer.
I'd like to take a shot at one of the questions you posed: "How does Westmoreland do Galula in 65 while he is staring down close to a combined strength of 200,000 regular NVA and south vietnamese communist forces inside the south that were organized as regular forces?" Through my readings regarding Vietnam, which have been far more thorough than, say, Malaysia, I realized that a common problem for commanders was to find and fix the enemy, especially in large numbers. Almost regardless of commander or area in Vietnam, "find and fix" was a problem on the ground. The enemy had the initiative, and was rarely around in large numbers for our superior air power or artillery to smash. Had we sought to both secure the population centers (in turn, cutting off resource nodes for those very NVA and VC) and to raise a legitimate South Vietnamese Army (they were utterly corrupt crap, by and large), I would imagine that the NVA and VC would have no choice but to engage American soldiers on our secured ground, with the combined might of the South Vietnamese and the US military brought to bare. If we stopped focusing on the forces parading around the countryside, which the North Vietnamese intelligently employed to keep us chasing ghosts on their terms, and focused instead on the difficult task of securing the population, the enemy would have to choose between losing relevance + initiative, or engaging Americans in set areas, an act in which they would get their skinny asses kicked (Tet all over again, except with us damn well ready).
“As Gian Gentile notes, as practiced by our government, it is merely a subterfuge to put U.S. forces on the ground in troubled areas, based on the questionable premise that somehow massive troop presence equates to enhanced security for the U.S. We tried that in Vietnam—and anyone who thinks that COIN wasn't part of the deal doesn't know history—but we learned that herding cats is still herding cats.”
-Publius
Publius,
I enjoy your writings and often agree with you, but all I have to offer to this quote is “wtf?” What you said is 100% post hoc reasoning. If it was subterfuge to put our forces on the ground, there would have been talk about COIN before the wars. When we went into Afghanistan, it most definitely wasn’t for COIN. I have heard we had US personnel on the ground in Afghanistan within 2 weeks after 9/11. When we went into Iraq, it sure as hell wasn’t for COIN. Fiasco (and many other texts) spelt out quite clearly that lack of phase 4 planning, which Fnord alluded to earlier. The planners for Iraq did not expect a protracted insurgency. There was no thought given to counter insurgency before either Iraq or Afghanistan, so what are you talking about? Seriously, did anyone even know the words “counter insurgency” before 2003? And the way you throw “we tried that in Vietnam” makes it sound like we went into Vietnam to do COIN as well. Uh, no. Vietnam was not sold to the American public as a COIN mission. Seriously, guys, stop with this post hoc reasoning. Let’s be honest, even if you disagree with it, COIN was a reaction to failed strategies and efforts. You might disagree that COIN has had any effect in Iraq, fine. But do not say COIN is subterfuge to put troops on the ground. You couldn’t be getting things more backwards.
And “massive troops presence?!” Have you seen Afghanistan from 2001-2008? Rarely has America attempted military action with such a slim pickings of soldiers. A Surge of 25,000 is still going to leave a country of that size quite devoid of American personnel.
Cohen?
Eliot Cohen?
Gentile, Publius and the rest: I cant help noticing when asked about models for unfcking the situation in Afghan, y`all start talking about movies. (Sorry for small snark, but its getting noticeable. Pat Lang, another COIN hater recently banned me from his site for asking the very same question). My central paradigm is that COIN became a necessity because of Rumsfelds dismal failure at playing the game of geo-politics and imperial over-reach. It "succeeded" in Iraq because of a number of factors, several of wich had to do with the enemy and their endearing ways of government and personal relations, but it still sort of kinda succeeded.
I for one half-heartedly supported the Afghan invasion, especially when seen in light of the opening plan wich called for massive aid and rebuilding from the get-go, funding wich never materialized in praxis. I vehemently opposed the war in Iraq, to the extent that I got myself arrested protesting it a couple of times. Hell, I got arrested demonstrating against Bill Clinton during the jugoslavian war. So I think my credentials as to opposing US foreign policy are pretty strong. However, like Abu M, I cant see much of an alternative to COIN in Afghanistan, both from a moral and practical pov. Cutting and running now, when the Jihadis are finally on the ropes with recent Pakistani developments, seems downright silly to me. Again I remain sceptical of the current surge unless it is followed by a actual *big* PRT-effort as well as a stepping up of the ANA. But I just cant see any alternative unless you want to hand bin Laden the keys of Kandahar and go home. Im having a hard time finding anyone who can formulate a strategic vision that doesnt involve COIn and doesnt surrender the countryside to the Talebs.
"Pat Lang, another COIN hater recently banned me from his site for asking the very same question"
Post the site.
There is nothing that pisses me off more than this shit. You just became my number one friend.
Post the site. I'll do recon before I go in. Trust me. I have much experience with this. I'll get you back.
Post it.
I swear to God. You will be good to Go before the week is out. Any problems me and you had in the past are history. We are friends. No debate. Freedom of Speech.
In my world, nobody bans anybody.
Apart from anything else, an 'approach' based on protecting the civilian population, rather than one that talks about 'minimizing harm' to it, or even worse 'levels of acceptable collateral damage', would seem more suited to conflict situations where the objective is to tamp things down enough so armies can disengage and go home.
Its also the least morally repugnant, which is always a nice starting point.
This was one helluva thread. So much for "Jump the Shark"....to be honest, I was worried as well. Dr XM, where you are...that's one strange place to go for "rehab." ;-)
More seriously - how in 2001 was Astan a "War of Choice"??!? What were the other choices? Let Takfiri International, or AQ and every terrorist idiot in the world with a real imagined grudge against the US, Britain or his home govt (or his parents) come out of the woodwork? Which they would have. Let's remember how complex our Western systems are, which the latest network theory emphasizes makes them easy to take down. Think of WTC. You didn't just take down two buildings - you took out a rail and subway hub, downtown NYC's two main local telco exchanges (West Street - destroyed, Broad Street - heavily damaged and it took months to restore) knocked out local power, damaged the Megapolis regional economy. Then there was the catastrophic damage to transportation...etc, etc.
And that's just two planes, cost the enemy 10 men.
Going on the offensive was not a war of choice. Think of the mood of the country at the time, for that matter the world. Going on the offensive and knocking the enemy of his perch, on the run and gaining - often by brute force - the intel needed to hunt down the transnational networks that were embedded among many nations gave us the space to feel guilty and heavy handed, and start thinking about nation building, democracy, and hence COIN. You can have all the cops and spies in the world looking for these idiots in Hamburg, London, NYC/NJ, Manila etc. As long as they have nations or even just large swaths of land to stage from, and Madrassas to recruit from, your pissing in the wind with the police/intel approach.
Personally I think COIN or nation building in AF/PAK is utter nonsense, since the areas that concern us seem to never have been part of a nation state in the sense we know it. *Caveat* I have not been there, so I only know what I read. It's just that it seems to be a near universal conclusion that NWFP and FATA and pretty much Astan outside the cities were never really part of the "nations" of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Let me offer an alternative - the correct form of international "CT" to a large scale attack on our homelands: massive punitive measures, to include nukes. We'll nuke you, and any nation we think supports materially, to include your citizens with you Riyal denominated checkbooks. And then we leave their Dar al-Shit.
Now having posted the fantasy nuke football alternative to invading Astan in 2001, I agree with Fnord. If indeed we are making progress at last, if indeed the Pakistan establishment is realizing their Frankenstein is more of a threat to them than India or at least not worth the cost, then now is not the time to cut and run.
Yes, from 2001 and on our response to Astan was ad hoc. WTF does anyone expect? We seem to have gotten smarter. Also luckier - and some of that luck was made in Iraq . Neither of which was a war of conquest - if it had been, it would have been easier for everyone. In Astan we were punting off the ropes. The initial Jawbreaker/SOF/Airpower/Northern Alliance seeming rapid and bloodless success lured people in power to think we could disentangle easy.
In Iraq our Phase IV plan was to declare democracy and leave within 4 months of the start of the conflict. We prefer to just buy oil, really. We really had just had it up to here with Saddam's antics, the worlds collective intelligence services Drank Saddam's WMD Koolaide , went in expecting to leave within 120 days (John Keegan - The Iraq War), and got stuck. Six bloody years and staggering mistakes at the strategic level later we *may* have sweated, bled, and lucked into an acceptable level of victory.
Fnord is cool. Gentile justs Rocks.
Another point: This discussion is strangely similar to the pro and counter Surge in Iraq discussions at the time it started. For better or worse it is being implemented as we write.
"elf agrees with Fnord" lol. Who`d have thunk it?
Johnny Rico: Thanks but no thanks. Its mr. Langs site to do with as he pleases. Having given the service that he has (and in some areas continue to do) he is perfectly allowed to manage it as he pleases. I in no way intended this to be a slur on mr. Lang.
Publius,
While I always respect your comments and insight, I tend to agree with Deus Ex. Hindsight makes the distinction between "war of choice" easy, but things aren't so obvious beforehand. Miscalculation about war seems pretty common throughout history and I think what that history should teach us is that embarking on war is a roll of the dice and should be avoided whenever possible.
Fnord,
Col. Lang banned YOU! Of all people! He does have a very itchy ban finger and I've noticed that beyond a few core commenters, few others stick around for long.
Johnny Rico,
There isn't much point in quarreling with Pat Lang. It's his blog, he moderates comments and, like it or not, he's got the right to do as he pleases. You're not going to get anywhere getting Fnord unbanned.
One more thing.
IMO (and Publius might agree with me here), the defenstration of our covert action and intelligence capabilities beginning in the 1970's has not only degraded our intelligence for decisionmakers, but made use of the military more likely as a policy option. We need to make covert operations a viable option for policymakers. While it is high-risk/high reward, the downsides to a failed covert operation are much less than failure in war.
Increasingly I'm coming to the conclusion that Afghanistan and the so-called "GWOT" are probably better fought in the long run as covert operations than military campaigns.
Huh?
Who the fuck is Pat Lang? That douche on the McNeil /Lerher report?
Guys. C'mon, I was just bustin your chops. I Love Bacevich, but I have no idea about these other guys.
Smoked.
I seen Lang on Macneil, but c'mon. Hahhahhaaaaaaaaaa. Never mess with Johnny Rico., I'm tellin ya, don't mess.
Go watch "The Hurt Locker" before you try. And never, ever, try to fuck with my boy, Gentile. Cuz I'm watching.
Andy: "Increasingly I'm coming to the conclusion that Afghanistan and the so-called "GWOT" are probably better fought in the long run as covert operations than military campaigns."
Andy, you've done better than me at summing up my thoughts. It's not the idea of dealing harshly with terrorists with which I disagree; it's the manner in which we do so. And of course you know I agree wholeheartedly with you about the shameful degradation of our intelligence capabilities.
To Elf, Fnord and others who believe that, well, now we're there, we need to get the job done in Afghanistan: I hear you and I respect your thoughts, which make a lot of sense. However, the unfortunate reality is that I do believe exiting sooner rather than later is in the best interests of the U.S. I just don't see this resulting in a favorable outcome, mainly because I don't ever see this nation making the commitment needed. It's my sense we'll just keep stumbling along until the sloth-like political process finally calls a halt to it. In short, I don't think it will ever be finished.
And just like the boy on Christmas morning, I am still digging through the manure looking for the pony called "Grand Strategy."
Hmmm....I am curious. How many successful nations, Empires etc. had a Grand Strategy they formulated in advance which they successfully followed through? I don't know if the USA had a formal Grand Strategy until after WWII when the Cold War began, and as for instance Bacevich argues in American Militarism, much of our Cold War Grand Strategy seems to have gone badly wrong - for instance that nuclear weapons made the cost of war so high it would basically go away-instead it shifted to smaller conflicts.
@Fnord,
Nonsense, we agree on important things like London strippers, alcohol, the British Empire we pretend to despise all the time. And pretentious snarks. Very important.
@Publius - I don't know what if anything Afghanistan offers for victory, other than our nation safe. Which really means Doctor Victor Paki-stein slays his monster creations, and destroys the labs they were bought to life in. I basically agree with AM on 10 years, 5,000 casualties and a lot of money = Chad. But by Odin's beard if we are making progress than pour in the resources and finish it. Then declare victory and leave. BTW if your watching Dr AM ---- I realize you don't believe in personalizing conflict - but Bin Laden's head would be really, really nice.
"But I sure don't like losing them"
Talk about the strategic cop out, Andrew.
This prattle is the same paradox one arrives at buried in Kilcullen's Congressional testimony: Yea, verily, wars such as Afghanistan have limited strategic value for the US; they're long and expensive in blood and treasure; and they often harm the occupying force for a decade or more, with the pain falling disproportionately on the military toiling at their trade. But, gee, we've sunk so much into it already, and we might be able to pull it out, to discuss alternative solutions is tantamount to defeatism, blah blah blah.
You're blessing the absurdity that doctrine should drive strategy, and you do so by resorting to tautology: "Yes, I fear that we're witnessing doctrine driving strategy to our collective ruin, but, hey, I can't comment on that because I'm too busy ensuring that doctrine drive our strategy."
A better way around this is to sheepishly shrug and say, "Oh, COL Gentile and namesake COL Bacevich, I've been crucified by a president and his supine Congress to a warmaking policy in Afghanistan. It's a nasty business, but it's the business that's been incorporated for America, and therefore me. I'm the mug at the bottom of the totem pole, not the top, so perhaps you should address these issues to those who aren't in Kabul."
I still wouldn't let you off the hook because even at the theater staff level there's something to say about offering alteratives to longterm policing of an endemic conflict and nation building to meet whatever our strategic goals remain to be met in South West Asia.
And there's also the vexing problem of so many COINdinistas failing to acknowledge inconvenient truths that put to lie the dominant narrative scaffolding their doctrinal research: Why was terrain denial so successfully employed in Iraq during the "Surge?" What is one to say about the Sadrist and Badrist success in using torture, dispossession and widespread highly kinetic methods to cow the Sunni Arab militias and break the will of those supporting them? In re Kitson, Templer, et al, could one not make the case that the 20 percent or so of Sunni Arabs in Iraq who ended up as refugees in various Levantine or Gulf neighbors not defacto residents of modern day concentration camps, culled from their former populations and put under homeroom watch by stern teachers far from the rumble? In the end, did COPs do nearly as much (even contribute 1 percent as much) to the pacification of Iraq as the highly kinetic belt operations or the coercive flail of the Shiite Arab militias and their confederates in the repressive Ministry of the Interior?
If I have to read another milquetoast essay by a MAJ fresh from NW Goateffistan doing a pale imitation of Jisr al Dorea I'm going to vomit: We drank chai with men in dresses. We learned the names of his kids and got them on the payroll. We took his bum cousins' fingerprints and put them to work manning checkpoints that allowed only a tenth as many IEDs into the AO as before, and that's why everything went so swimmingly. It's all horseshit, and by failing to condemn it you end up sanctioning the endless printings of a convenient lie.
In the end, what role does CNAS as an institution, and this blog as its court jester, play in perpetuating a fib? Sure, it's all for the greater good of buying time so that our military policies in Iraq, Afghanistan or (name your broken state here) can weave their ACU magic and turn surly "populations" into grateful occupied masses, either bought off or killed by our proxies until they submit, but why would you want to be part of that?
You wink and suggest that you agree in the main with Bacevich and Gentile, but then you return to haunting the machine, twirling your cog, churning out your policy widget. If you really agreed, you might stick a spanner in the works, and grin broadly at your mischief.
Fnord and AM make the point here. Bacevich, Gentile and crowd seem to be talking past the COIN "supporters" (sorry, that makes it sound like we want to get into COIN wars - we don't!). The current operations are a reaction to failed strategies during Rumsfeld's time at Defence. COIN currently in practice in Iraq and Afghanistan are strategies impossed after conflict initiation in order to get us the hell out of these situations in a responsible and best-self-interest-for-the-future way. COIN, as currently being implemented on the ground, in not a doctrine on how to fight wars, its a strategy.
I feel that Bacevich and Gentile are too cynical (or at least more than I am) when viewing these conflicts and take justifiable questions of COIN out of context.
I would whole heartily agree with both men if the U.S. began initiating wars/ conflicts based upon COIN as a doctrine, instead of as a strategy in current ones.
But Wheat Kings please read SNLII's most excellent post right above yours. The problem is that the hyper consumption with Coin (Coin as tactics and operations) now drives strategy and eclipses alternatives to doing thing differently in Astan or other operations in the future in the World's troubled spots. To see what I mean go and get Krepinevich's hugely important, but deeply flawed, book on Vietnam titled "The Army and Vietnam" and read his chapter "A Strategy of Tactics." But when you read it, substitute conventional army with Coin army and Vietnam with Afghanistan, and you will hopefully see the essential problem that I, SNLII, Publius, (my body guard Johnny Rico) and others have.
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