Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS.
Tyler Moselle, a smart and capable researcher based at Harvard's Carr Center, has a bizarre op-ed in today's Financial Times in which he warns that counterinsurgency not be considered "a panacea for American national security and foreign policy." Which is quite good advice save for the fact that I cannot name a single person arguing that counterinsurgency should be a panacea for American national security and foreign policy. (To be fair, Tyler calls this a "basic fact." Which is exactly what it is, in the sense that you cannot argue with facts.)
If I am reading Tyler's op-ed correctly, though, one of the things that concerns him is that a lot of the aid and development work being done in Afghanistan is being effectively militarized by the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy. For this concern I have some sympathy. But not much.
As I see it, the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is one of stablization. That's not the same thing as nation-building, which is what Andrew Bacevich claims -- not without justification -- the United States and its allies are doing.
Moselle seems to want something more. He wants, in his words, "a mixture of nation-building, stability operations, long-term humanitarian and economic development, precision-based counter-terrorism strikes, political negotiations with the Taliban -- plus counter-insurgency to put down the Taliban."
Goodness gracious, Tyler, is there anything you don't want?
This is the kind of stuff that drives people like Bacevich nuts, because it's a prescription for a 30-year occupation of the country without any discussion of resources (hint: they're limited) or prioritization of effort.
So what's the solution?
I have been thinking a lot about this in advance of and since I returned from a conference on assessing the stablization effects of aid and development programs in Afghanistan. Some really good work is being done by folks like Eli Berman and Andrew Wilder to determine which aid and development projects are actually addressing drivers of conflict, which aid and development projects might be exacerbating the conflict, and which aid and development projects are quite nice when considered in and of themselves but which have no real effect on levels of violence.
Considering the fact that the United States and its allies a) have decidedly limited resources and b) do not want to continue to occupy Afghanistan too far into the next decade, it is my humble opinion that we should focus what money and resources we are sending to Afghanistan overwhelmingly on those projects which can demonstrate they are having an effect on levels of violence. In Iraq, as Berman & Co. demonstrate (.pdf), that meant CERP funds -- especially when those CERP funds were used in conjunction with a PRT. In Afghanistan, that might mean whatever they are calling CERP these days (I forget), and programs like the NSP.
It also means that we should be constantly assessing what programs are having an effect, even if that means folks like me have to swallow our pride and hand over our data to the quant geeks who specialize in analyzing it. Because, as Berman points out, if you tried to spend $30 billion on a domestic program in the United States without any pilot programs or means to assess its effectiveness, you would get laughed out of the Congress. The reforms initiated after the Great Society programs, in fact, made doing such a thing hard if not impossible. But we have spent well over $30 billion in humanitarian and reconstruction assistance in Afghanistan, and as far as I can tell, no one really understands yet what programs are having a stablizing effect, what programs are either exacerbating the conflict or turning Afghanistan into a bona fide rentier state (it's already is, actually), and which programs are nice but ineffective.
In conclusion, you may have never thought you would read a call for minimalist means on this blog, but I have come to believe that is more or less what we need in Afghanistan in terms of aid and development.
As I read Moselle's op-ed, he basically warns of the problems associated with allowing couterinsurgency theory to expand beyond its appropropiate domain and monoplolize policy thinking in ways in which it was never intended. COIN has seeped into the US interagency in numerous intangible ways and as Moselle points out, US SecDef Gates is promoting COIN theory and capabilities so I don't think the straw man comment is relevant--Moselle simply doesn't list them all in the short op-ed.
Whether we want to stay in Afghanistan 10 years or not is point, the party is drawing to a close, our credit line is running out. So the choice then comes up, austerity for citizens and New Deal for the Middle East? That you can do for awhile, Americans it seems don't have the gumption to realize when they are getting fleeced, but eventually the fiat cash runs out, economic downturn is too much, you can only close up so many American schools and even the Fox News crowd will start to get mad about the wastage going on in Afghanistan.
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@245?
WTF????
يا ابو مقاومة،
I know this is changing topics, but I've been hoping you would comment on this for a while and you haven't so...any chance you feel like investigating/posting on the "Increasing Small Arms Lethality in Afghanistan: Taking Back the Infantry Half-Kilometer" paper that made news a few weeks ago?
http://kitup.military.com/2010/03/ehrhart-speaks-afghan-troop-gear-misma...
http://www.military.com/news/article/army-paper-prompts-look-at-combat-g...
Bing West talked a lot about issues like this at the massive COIN conference at the National Press Club in September (A conference a whole bunch of CNAS folk were at, ala fikra, although they hardly blogged on this part of the conference at all). He railed, for example, about how the Taliban runs circles around our guys at altitude and engages from afar and withdraws with impunity without any worry that our forces can close and destroy them (and confident that we won't engage with indirect fire due to ROE restrictions).
Here's a little excerpt from those articles; seems like some pretty pivotal issues, no?
Ehrhart wrote that despite the fact that 50 percent of Army engagements in Afghanistan occur with the enemy attacking at 300 meters or beyond, the majority of Soldiers are trained to fire their M4 carbines accurately to 200 meters, and more than 80 percent of Joes in an infantry company are equipped with weapons that can't touch the enemy beyond that range.
The enemy in Afghanistan, Ehrhart writes, "engages United States forces from high ground with medium and heavy weapons, often including mortars, knowing that we are restricted by our equipment limitations and the inability of our overburdened soldiers to maneuver at elevations exceeding 6000 feet."
The weapon systems that can engage the enemy in Afghanistan effectively beyond 200 meters "represent 19 percent of the company's firepower," he adds. "This is unacceptable."
Just for clarification, are you suggesting that the NSP projects "are having an effect on levels of violence"?
AM:
BLUF: Paragraph Two (paragraph after next).
When are you going to start taking game theory and structural equation modeling? Moreover, there are a lot of quants to go around; there's nothing wrong with hanging out with Berman et al - I'm sure they're cool dudes - but remember, you can meet a lot of cool quant dudes by reading the APSR, AJPS, JCR, JPR and the like and meeting the appropriate authors (perhaps by attending ISA, APSA and the like).
More seriously, I view you as someone at the nexus of policymaking and scholarship. (Hi, Scott Wedman.) Do you think this paper will actually have an effect on US operations (maybe because it's being published on this website?)?
Finally, I'm not being compensated by him in any way, shape or form - nor does he even really have a clue who I actually am - but I'd direct readers to Schmedlap's blog that covers the same territory:
http://www.schmedlap.com/weblog/post.aspx?id=100315-1
ADTS
we should focus what money and resources we are sending to Afghanistan overwhelmingly on those projects which can demonstrate they are having an effect on levels of violence.
###
Disclaimer: I could not get past the subscriber wall, and gave a quick skim of the paper, focusing mainly on the conclusion (I'm not a quant).
Substantively:
First, this is a statement that, on its face, no one quarrel with.
Second, though, I *do* wonder if this is a panacea. What is the desired end-state, and do CERP funds achieve this, or "merely" reduce violence? As you note, Afghanistan already is a rentier state, and we (especially Middle East scholars) know how those tend to fare (not well). Does having outsiders providing public goods make for a strong central government? Is the right hand operating in conjunction with the left?
Finally, I'd say if one wants to write a qualitative manifesto, this might be the place in which to do so. Perhaps (non-financial) program audits and case studies, in conjunction with the quants' work, would be the appropriate way to discern what works, and why. Perhaps, as well, one can examine the impact of military-dispensed aid in other conflicts or contexts. I can imagine all sorts of unintended consequences and boomerang effects.
ADTS
http://weeklystandard.com/articles/stalking-cia
I'm closing in on the true terrorists at the CIA. Why? Because I am a traitor.
http://weeklystandard.com/articles/stalking-cia
good thing I'm not very smart (Sen Graham: what's the precedent for this? A: Doh)
See this in the times -- Taliban getting training on IED's in Iran.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article7069779.ece
"Because, as Berman points out, if you tried to spend $30 billion on a domestic program in the United States without any pilot programs or means to assess its effectiveness, you would get laughed out of the Congress. The reforms initiated after the Great Society programs, in fact, made doing such a thing hard if not impossible."
If anybody can explain that one, please jump in.
Isn't "Amil" Arabic for spy handler or case officer, so which is it? ISI, the Iranians, Indians, Chinese or Cubans? We know who you are now "Amil". I'm James Bond and this here is Jason Bourne.
Schmedlap,
It's the kind of stuff they tell themselves to sleep at night, as they bankrupt the Republic. This "Congress" in particular.
Afghanistan is a giant scam. From the generals out to make their mark to the think tanks and Sunday morning pundits and "experts" through the defence industry and ending up with crooks who run the Afghan government with a few stops along the way to the Taliban that gets most of it's cash from NATO.
There is no evidence that any kind of development will reduce political violence. In fact in Afghanistan's case it will fuel the war by providing the Taliban cash. It's like hoping the Mafia will go away in an economic boom. Violence and development cash have been on a parallel upward track since 2004. The "surge" will have the opposite effect it was sold as having.
You talk about quants and metrics all you want but it comes down to psychology and criminology.
The Taliban aren't happy with armed foreigners in their country. Enough young guys are willing to have a go at NATO to keep the war going. The Afghan and foreign criminals are happy to have NATO in Afghanistan because they have lots of cash and can be defrauded quite easily. If the war ended the NATO cash cow would go so no one in the Afghan government or business classes wants to see that happen. They're looking for an acceptable level of violence that will let them keep raking in the dough while making it safe enough to operate but not safe enough for NATO to pull out.
The ANP is among the best dodges they've come up with. Six billion to train the village idiots so far and much more coming. Everyone makes out and there is no hope for enough of an improvement to allow NATO to exit. In fact the ANP may be the main ammo source for the Taliban so its perfectly self-perpetuating.
It's the kind of stuff they tell themselves to sleep at night, as they bankrupt the Republic. This "Congress" in particular.
http://www.hungerforubrand.com
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