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Arguing Afghanistan, Arguing Vietnam
In case you missed it (not likely), the New York Times featured dueling op-eds from both Lewis Sorley and Gordon Goldstein on the lessons of Vietnam as applied to Afghanistan. One of the reasons I suggested an end to the reductio ad Vietnamum on the blog this weekend is because the lessons of that conflict as they apply to Afghanistan are far from clear, as these op-eds demonstrate. Two smart people could both carefully read history and arrive at two different conclusions as to what we should do in Afghanistan.
When in doubt, do not run
When in doubt, do not run away. And "The war of god hates indecision" is a famous quote from some dead greek (or roman) I cant remember the name of.
I noticed someone else downthread writing that it didnt matter if the extras deploy pre or post winter, btw. Thats wrong. If what Old Blue reports and there is a serious COIN filtration to the ANA going on, those extra boots would let others do their job in training the ANA during winter that much easier. As far as I can understand. (Btw, I still dont get the whole US rotation platform with the all-in, all-out. Has the transition between units become better?)
I dunno, you've got one guy
I dunno, you've got one guy (I think he spells it Sorley, btw) talking about what worked and what didn't in the 1972 COIN-on-the-ground context, and you've got one guy talking about what worked and what didn't in the 1965 strategic planning context. Not sure that there's any contradiction there at all. Both, for instance, talk about the importance of strong local forces; in any case, they're the lessons learned from two totally different phases of the war.
Goldstein's is the weaker piece, btw: presidents should only consider strategy, not politics when making decisions, but only they should decide on questions of strategy? Really? If military strategy is your one and only consideration then surely the president is the wrong person to be the "Decider." One can say, as Bundy did, that LBJ took domestic considerations too far, without having to say that they are irrelevant: as Sorley correctly points out, if you can't sustain the war effort's domestic support long enough for the strategy to work, everything else is pointless. That means considering politics. And puts things back in the executive branch's proper realm of balancing all the various interests at stake.
Flit
Lewis Sorley gave a video
Lewis Sorley gave a video candid interview for the Nixon Foundation blog on lessons learned from Vietnam:
http://thenewnixon.org/2009/10/07/lewis-sorley-and-the-better-war/
Andrew: Might you share what
Andrew: Might you share what lessons you think from history are clear and applicable for Afghanistan? The British in Malaya?
For whatever it is worth, and readers of this blog are probably getting tired of hearing me say this but the Sorley thesis has come under serious scholarly challenge over the past number of years, especially by military historian Andrew Birtle in his award winning essay on "PROVN and the historians." Most of what Sorley states are lessons from Vietnam in this NY Times piece, Birtle shows to be not as Sorley has presented them. For example Sorley gives the impression that Abrams was the Galula incarnate, stopped large scale operations, and focused almost completely on pacification. It is true that Abrams did place pacification as a higher priority after Tet, but so too would have Westmoreland if he had stayed in place. Also, Abrams in 1969 actually had the American Army conducting more large scale operations than Westmoreland did from mid 67 to mid 68. The former in 69 spent 3,328 battalion days doing large unit operations and the latter, Abrams from mid 69 to 70 spent 3,648 battalion days at large unit operations. But the impression that Sorley gives is of a radically changed course for the American Army that almost immediately after Abrams took over moved toward a more enlightened Galula like approach. Nagl and Krepinevich argue basically the same thing. Abrams often quipped that his strategic reserve were his B52s.
gian
During Vietnam there was an
During Vietnam there was an actual North Vietnamese government as a negotiating partner, and that government had the means and ability to step in and govern the whole of Vietnam. Even though the US pulled out and the South lost, the whole region didn't descend into a chaotic vacuum. No similar organ exists in Afghanistan. An American withdrawal may likely result in a dragged out civil war and the potential Balkanization of the region into feudal fiefdoms and mini-narco states. It may be more worthwhile to study Columbia (and I would consider the Afgh mission a resounding success if it left Afghanistan looking like Columbia).
On the other hand, there are some very good lessons to be drawn from raising the ARVN in the image of the US Army. In short, it's the wrong model for defending against insurgencies. The wonderful work "Counterguerrilla Operations: The Philippines Experience" proposed a decent orbat but even that seems too rigid a structure to deal with modern insurgents. Meanwhile, if the US Border Police can't deal with the Mexican border, why would anyone think that model can solve the Pakistani border?!
Plus (to be a little tongue in cheek), it's a lot harder to set fire to a mud-brick compound than a thatched hut.
"Reducto ad Vietnamum" Not
"Reducto ad Vietnamum"
Not bad. I still like VietSpam better.
Colonel Gentile (and
Colonel Gentile (and everyone), why is it important or relevant to find the closest possible example from history? Can't there be new situations from time to time?
Solving a problem by applying successful tactics from the past works great for most problems of a low order of complexity, so we're hard-wired psychologically to scan our knowledge of past events looking for the most similar problem to what we're experiencing now, because we expect that someone has solved this problem before us. As engineers I and my co-workers do this all the time. However, sometimes there's a situation that's completely new, or at least dissimilar enough to make historical examples useless to us.
I feel like that's where we're at in Afghanistan. Transparently, Afghanistan is neither Vietnam, Algeria, Mindanao, nor Malaya. We're SOL when it comes to examples of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, except for the examples of what not to do set by the Soviets and the Raj.
Can't we just drop the historical analogies and blaze our own trail here and stop trying to apply the transitive property of Vietnam?
Possibly a valid lesson
Possibly a valid lesson applying to both Afghanistan and Vietnam is their ultimate intolerance of a foreign presence.
This, I believe, is what makes/has made Afghanistan, like Vietnam such a difficult -- if not impossible -- task.
For the COIN/nation-state building/societal transformation to be a viable consideration for both these countries, the people of both Afghanistan and Vietnam -- and their neighbors -- have/had to be able to tolerate foreigners (military and civilian boots on the ground) (1) "up to their eyeballs" and (2) for an undetermined and very extended period of time (probably decades). And they have/ad to be able to, simultaneously, tolerate and assimilate a new, foreign-imposed, foreign way-of-life.
This, the people of Afghanistan and Vietnam (like China before them?) have not been/were not able to do.
This reality (historic intolerance for a large and long-term foreign presence; difficulty of simultaneously tolerating and assimilating a foreign-imposed, foreign way-of-life), I believe, is what makes Sec. Gates rightfully hesitate in recommending the COIN/nation-state building/societal transformation model for Afghanistan.
I believe Sec. Gates worries that such approach will cause -- not only Afghanistan to explode/implode --but also the region.
First, history is inherently
First, history is inherently ambiguous, and two people can read the same document or set of documents, or any other form of text or interpretive data, and come to different conclusions.
Irrespective of whose historiography is correct, no two instances or cases are ever identical, and even subtle differences could - or should - lead to widely varying policy prescriptions. So in a sense, it doesn't matter whose Vietnam/Malaya/other COIN campaign history is the correct one. Vietnam was not Malaya, and neither is Afghanistan. This doesn't mean to discard the lessons those campaigns hold, nor to stop trying to unlock those lessons, but rather, that one should discount those lessons because they'll never be directly applicable to the current conflicts in which we're currently engaged.
To cite two differences: Vietnam was a hybrid conflict involving the NVA and the VC - two very different organizations. So perhaps having battalions in the field was not a bad thing to do, because of the NVA, to whom, of course, we ultimately lost the war in 1975. (And, not to sound like a warmonger, but would not have lost the war had there been the willingness to use B-52s as was the case in the Easter Offensive of 1972.) Malaya involved the removal of imperial rule over a colony; Afghanistan involves the imposition of order over a polity that has been fractionalized or in a state of war for 30 years. So maybe there's a difference in how one should go about trying to raise instruments of state control (e.g., in Malaya, there was a Humpty Dumpty from which to proceed - the British system of colonial policing).
I'd highly recommend the closing pages of Yuen Foong Khong's "Analogies at War" where he notes that the ambiguity off (then-) commonly held schemas and analogies are/were a good thing; they forced people to think through superficial similarities and focus on key similarities and differences.
I recognize I'm contradicting what I wrote in response to Colonel Gentile's post the other day, in which I stated where are we to get our lessons for the present if not from the past, but I think I'm in keeping with his argument that Clausewitz says to leave history and/or theory behind once one arrives at the actual situation in hand.
ADTS
"Can't we just drop the
"Can't we just drop the historical analogies and blaze our own trail here and stop trying to apply the transitive property of Vietnam?"
Hear Hear - as appropriate as the comparison may sometimes be it does weary me somewhat this continual comparison. AFPAK is not SE Asia, there is a different populace, different economic and political variances and a different force structure.
That's not to say that some historical reference is not valid, but I don't think the whole thing can be hinged on if we just figured out where we went wrong in Vietnam we can get this one right.
I have said this before though - most interesting factoid picked up from chatting to locals when I was in Vietnam on my honeymoon was just how close they were to packing up and calling it all off. If the US had stayed the course for a few more years they would have most likely called it quits. Says something for holding the course in the face of a growing disconnect from the population, the government and the ivory towers posse in relation to how popular this war is.
I agree with many of the
I agree with many of the comments made about history and reasoning through contemporary problems with historical analogy. ADTS, David Sutton, et al are correct to be sure; history does not repeat itself. Obviously Astan is not the Nam, just like the Nam was not Malaya, etc, etc.
Yet within the Coin Paradigm history is, sadly and wrongly used in this way. There is a triumverant of sorts that starts with Malaya, goes directly to Vietnam, then travels all the way forward to Iraq with strong implications for Astan. Read Sorley's latest oped pieces where he makes statements like "what we now know, or should know" implying that he has done away with the ambiguity of history that ADTS so rightly brings out and has devined not only the obective truth about vietnam but has also discerned lessons from it that can be applied directly to Afghanistan. Sorley, I imagine, has Clausewitz rolling in his grave because he is trying to arm commanders today with his discerned lessons from the past to be applied directly on the ground in Astan. In a sense he is very much telling commanders to take history to the battlefield with them.
Focusing on the similarities
Focusing on the similarities of lack thereof between what happened on the ground in the Viet Nam War and in this war misses the big point: the striking similarity between the domestic political debate surrounding both wars. The domestic political dynamic is identical: those who want to continue the war will run out of time, notwithstanding the quality and persuasiveness of their arguments and the bravery, competance, and professionalism of the US armed services. Both the pro- and anti-war factions know this, even though a real military victory and/or political accomodation may be attainable at some unknown indefinite point in the future. The pro-war faction can't promise victory by 2025 (which may be reasonable, but even then still can't be guaranteed) and expect the war to continue in the meantime. So the pro-war faction can only break the war down into small discrete increments defined by months rather than years. Ease the country along for 12 to 18 months; then ease the country along for another 12 to 18 months, again, again, and again. So even if the pro-war faction wins the present argument and gets what they want for the next 12 to 18 months, the anti-war faction doesn't shut up and go away. The debate going on this site just like the larger domestic political debate will continue. The pro-war faction has to win the political argument every single time ( which will have to be won every 12 to 18 months) in order to win the war. The anti-war faction only has to win the political argument once.
For another example of the
For another example of the Vietnam-Afghanistan analogy gone bankrupt, see Mark Moyar's article criticizing Goldstein's book on ForeignPolicy.com. The article is completely devoid of strategic context and implication, much like most of the attempts to shoe-horn one historical analogy into current events. You cannot ignore the question of whether a war is/was worth fighting. You cannot ignore the complete difference in the reasons for going to war and events that led to war and escalation. Moreover, it's not a question of who screwed up in Vietnam. Both civilians and the military made huge mistakes. Backing Diem was a mistake. So was the coup. That doesn't prove that the military had it right, either. What does Moyar suggest? 500,000 troops, more bombing (?!) and attacking the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Even assuming that Vietnam was worth that terrible price -- and it wasn't -- each of those methods was eventually tried and failed miserably. Not only that, but the only semi-convincing argument that's been made that "defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory" focuses on Gen. Abrams' counterinsurgency tactics -- not the "more troops, more killling" approach and poor track record of Gen. Westmoreland. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/19/disastrous_lessons
On the domestic side, re: the last visitor: No it's not identical. How can you completely ignore the absence of the draft in the current debate? The anti-war faction may not shut up and go away, but there won't be mass protests, Kent State, throwing pig's blood on soldiers, burning draft cards, etc. To equate today's trite domestic problems with the near-rendering of social fabric in the 1960s is just as great a disservice to history as claiming similarities "on the ground" between Vietnam and Afghanistan.
"One of the reasons I
"One of the reasons I suggested an end to the reducto ad Vietnamum on the blog this weekend is because the lessons of that conflict as they apply to Afghanistan are far from clear, as these op-eds demonstrate."
Of course the lessons are "far from clear" to Exum because they have to be unclear for his arguement about Afghanistan to hold up. Of course Exum and the COIN pushers in Afghanistan going to minimize the lessons learned from Vietnam --- they have to.
OT, but props to the british
OT, but props to the british army: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1255694853178&pagename=JPost%...
Isn't comparing all wars to
Isn't comparing all wars to Vietnam something that's taught in Lazy Rhetoric 101 -- along with comparing everyone you disagree with to Hitler?
What's wrong with Lazy
What's wrong with Lazy Rhetoric 101?! I loved that class. Are you some kind of Nazi? ;o)
Medianlyist: The arguments,
Medianlyist: The arguments, pro and con, on this site are usually thoughtful, reasoned, and insightful. The domestic political debate, pro and con, made by elected officials and echoed by their media allies by and large is not. They're nothing more than slogans, which vary very little from the slogans of the Viet Nam War. Have you noticed that the slogans for invading Iraq are very similar to the slogans for invading Iran? Have you noticed that the slogans for continuing the war in Iraq are very similar to the slogans for continuing the war in Astan? I agree that the domestic situation is different today from that during the Viet Nam War. I and my friends gathered around a radio to listen to the broadcast of the draft lottery for our birth year. Be that as it may, to successfully prosecute a COIN war requires a successfull prosecution of a domestic public relations campaign to win the "hearts and minds" of the citizens on the home front. The pro-war slogans during Viet Nam eventually lost their vitality. The current pro-war slogans will likewise lose thier vitality, if they haven't already. The problem for the pro-war faction is that it is human nature to ask for predictions of possible outcomes. A patient about to undertake a major medical treatment (whether cancer treatment or plastic surgery) will always ask the doctor to handicap the good and bad outcomes. The patient will always ask how long the treatment will last and how long the recovery will be. A good doctor will always answer these questions, usually by providing a range of possible outcomes. The pro-war faction can't answer these questions, because to even provide a range of outcomes will immediately end support for the war.
Visitor at 1032, I
Visitor at 1032,
I completely agree w/ you that the MSM has, for the past 8 yrs, dumbed down the debate into puerile or otherwise misfocused slogans and arguments. Only now have they become serious about the issues at hand. But there's a nuance I think you might have unintentionally glossed over:
Your statement: "The problem for the pro-war faction is that it is human nature to ask for predictions of possible
outcomes. A patient about to undertake a major medical treatment (whether cancer treatment or plastic surgery)
will always ask the doctor to handicap the good and bad outcomes. The patient will always ask how long the
treatment will last and how long the recovery will be. A good doctor will always answer these questions, usually by
providing a range of possible outcomes."
The patient, in this case the American voter, hasn't even been given the final and complete diagnosis from which they can even begin to ask for possible outcomes yet. The patient doesn't even know if the major medical treatment is required and the doctor(s) haven't been able to argue the affirmative with any certainty yet. Before I'd be thinking about possible outcomes, I'd need to know the doctor thinks the condition is such that the surgery is required; only then could I look at second opinions or alternative treatments and possible outcomes.
But the American people haven't been given that diagnosis on Afghanistan yet and that's where the argument really lies at, not at whether one option will 'win' AFG faster and cheaper than the other. The American people haven't been told that AFG is a necessary cancer that needs to be excised and that the patient risks death or major deformity if it is not.
I don't think its that the pro-war faction/COINdinistas can't answer that fundamental question for us; they're simply not the ones to do so. That would be like the HMO providing medical advice in this analogy. The HMO can advise me on the the fastest and cheapest (or otherwise available) way to pay for a surgery but they will not be the ones to tell me I need it. The President will make that case, not the Pentagon or defense think-tanks advising the President on the tactics and operations to successfully prosecute one COA versus another.
An observation: In both
An observation: In both Vietnam and Afghanistan, the initial stages of the war were severely mishandled. Civilian and military leaders made mistakes, at least some of which could be characterized as gross negligence. In both cases, the mistakes led to the efforts reaching a precipice, new commanders being appointed and the new commanders deploying new strategies (or at least calling for a new strategy).
The lesson of Vietnam for our current situation would be what was the effect of the change in strategy in Vietnam. Everything leading up to Westmoreland's deployment and during his time in command is irrelevant to that question. Sorley makes the case that the change in strategy under Abrams was making progress and would have resulted in holding South Vietnam together had it been maintained. Gentile points out scholars who refute that narrative, however, Goldstein ignores the topic. Would it be too much ask for a debate as to whether Abrams' mission was a viable path forward or a fool's errand rather than the current one between is it more important that we went in the way we did or what we did after deploying Abrams?
Jeremy Kotkin at 11:09: What
Jeremy Kotkin at 11:09:
What was asked the Bush Administration during the run-up to the Iraq War was "how long would the troops be in Iraq?" This was the wrong question, because it permitted an answer of "to set a deadline would aid our enemies." This was a reasonable answer. The better question was "if things go badly, how long will our troops be in Iraq?" It could still be answered the same way, but the answer would be a lot less reasonable, because it obviously does not answer what anyone would consider a reasonable question. Moreover answering it fully and fairly can not be done without answering why the war would need to be fought in the first place.
I agree the President is the one to answer these questions as to Astan, including an explicit answer to "if things go badly, how long will our troops be in Astan?" But others who weigh in on this should explicitly answer the same question as well. Otherwise they are just filibustering.
I found Sorley's piece
I found Sorley's piece profoundly unconvincing.
Some comments:
1. "Create an effective central government."
There's far too little recognition that "create" and "effective" are in deep tension with each other. Perhaps insuperable.
2. "Washington should make some of its support to his [Karzai's] government contingent on anticorruption efforts and delivering real services to his people."
This assumes Karzai's corruption/ineffectiveness is a result of his simply choosing to be corrupt and inefficient, and ignores the structural/cultural dynamics that make his gov't what it is.
Withholding aid will not make him more efficient, it will weaken the central gov't Sorley says we need to be "creating." It will be less effective as a result, and it will be all the more obviously our "creation."
Among other consequences, Afghans will find it difficult to muster the devotion required to fight and die for such a gov't.
3. "Control the borders."
{Excuse me, I'm rolling on the floor laughing, and can't comment.}
4. "The self-imposed prohibitions against going outside South Vietnam with ground forces allowed the enemy to use border areas for training, supply routes and sanctuary."
I won't mention Cambodia, Laos . . . or, perhaps the argument is we should have done it all, earlier? LBJ gets on TV in 1965 and announces, "My fellow Americans, in response to the attack on Pleiku, I'm asking Congress to declare war on the entirety of South-East Asia . . . it's the least we can do . . ."
I guess we can call this "the ink blot" strategy on steroids? Today, Afghanistan and Pakistan, tomorrow, China?
A multi-nation strategy to stabilize Central Asia surely won't arouse any opposition in that region. They'll greet us as liberators. It'll cost peanuts. And it'll only take, what, a platoon? Two?
5. "Maintain political support at home: ... Neither Lyndon Johnson nor Richard Nixon was able to rally public and press support for the war."
And that had everything to do with the nature of the war.
"President Obama . . . must also come up with a new approach for selling it to Congress and the American people."
Again, hilarious.
Maybe he can find some way of convincing us it'll be fun?
Look, the people aren't buying because they don't want it. They don't want it because of what it is, not because of what any president has or hasn't said about it.
We're too fixated on that Gettysburg Address moment, thinking presidents can just come up with the right collection of phrases and presto, BF Skinner presses our buttons. Gettysburg as a speech wasn't such a great immediate success. What changed public opinion on that war wasn't what Lincoln said, it's what Meade and Grant and Sherman did.
Has anybody asked the
Has anybody asked the Vietnamese?
I've searched for Afghanistan on the Vietnamese government portal (http://www.chinhphu.vn), but can't read the answer.
Also: Even if Afghanistan
Also:
Even if Afghanistan and Vietnam were practically the same country, so the same things would work or not work, it's different.
Our purpose is different, the weapons are different, the US military is different, there is no north and south Afghanistan, there is no Soviet Union. Vietnam wasn't harboring al-Queda, the World Trade Center had not been attacked (or built!). The internet.
And they aren't the same country, of course: Different terrain, tribes, culture, climate. The Taliban are unpopular foreigners, Ho Chi Minh was a Vietnamese "Hero".
We're opposed to Communism, we aren't opposed to Islam.
So what lessons apply? We were confused about Vietnam (misunderstood the Tet Offensive, for example) so we should try to not be confused about Afghanistan. Agreed.
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