Center for a New American Security

Why not use that

Why not use that all-volunteer military, now with Gays, to restore infrastructure here and revive inner city and small town America. They don't need to be doing all that in some butt fuck country, that's soon forget about us since China will have more money to give.

>> do counterinsurgency

>> do counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan highlight
>> a larger problem within U.S. foreign and defense policy?

I would say yes, although not for the reasons I think you're implying here. The fact that we need to resort to COIN in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place highlights the huge way we screwed up the handling of the aftermath of each invasion. As far as I can tell, the string of failures in each theater that led to the current insurgencies (necessitating COIN) were the result of the civilian leadership's poor "foreign and defense policy."

A larger problem with US

A larger problem with US defense and foreign policy?

The question reminds me of a universal repair technique a fellow Motorrad enthusiast once shared with me. "The great thing about motorscooters," he said, "is that any scooter can be fixed with one simple tool - a long chain. Here's what you do. First, tie one end of the chain to the front wheel of your scooter. Second, pick up the other end of the chain, and walk out in any direction until the chain is taut. Third, drop the chain, and go get a real bike."

If you don't have a long chain or a motorscooter, here's another exercise. Edgar Mowrer, no conspiracy nut but a completely mainstream New Deal reporter, in 1948 wrote a book called The Nightmare of US Foreign Policy. Any decent library will have it. Read this book, then figure out what Mowrer, or perhaps Clive Barker, would call the sequel if he wrote it in 2010. In '48, the nightmare had barely begun!

And finally, if you are humpin' it out in the 'Stan with neither motorscooter nor library in sight, shooting Nerf bullets, handing out Bibles and chocolate and getting your balls blown off, may I recommend Andrew Carnegie's Triumphant Democracy: Sixty Years' March of the Republic? Especially the chapter on foreign affairs? "Parties may change, but the foreign policy of the Republic, never." Perhaps someone should send Jessica Tuchman Mathews a copy.

If you read Carnegie's screed carefully, you can actually see both the old, functional 19th-century foreign policy of the Republic, and the new, dysfunctional nightmare in embryo. The latter is more clearly stated by the likes of Benjamin Franklin Trueblood, in his Federation of the World (1899). I have no idea who this author was, but there was a lot of this material floating around - both frankly theological, and easily recognizable in the future work of the Carnegie Endowment.

And its Commie friends. Actually, Communism is best understood as the export edition of American progressivism. From democratic jihad to actual jihad, in no more than a century! And the evening-lands continue their undergoing, taking the rest of the planet with them. "The Nightmare of US Foreign Policy VII: Dank Marja in the Hindu Kush." Really there's only one problem with US foreign and defence policy, which is that it's completely disconnected from objective reality and always has been. Where is that long chain when you need it?

One issue I have with the

One issue I have with the "Cult of COIN"--and I say this as a COINdinista--is that Dr. Nagl once criticized the use of conventional tactics in a COIN environment as "seeing nails when all you have is a hammer". I'm fearing that COIN might become the next hammer. Fortunately, I think most realize how expensive, manpower-intensive, and time-consuming these types of operations are...

Starbuck, the problem with

Starbuck, the problem with PC-COIN is not that you are seeing nails when all you have is a hammer, but that you are trying to drive nails with a wet noodle, i.e., an instrument singularly ill-suited to achieve the desired purpose and that cannot succeed no matter how many expensive bags of noodles you throw at the problem. Worse yet, if you actually succeeded in driving a nail with a wet noodle, the Left would take away the noodles and give you something even more useless.

"I'm fearing that COIN might

"I'm fearing that COIN might become the next hammer."

Well said. Though COIN is no exception - when EBO and RMAs and all of that were in vogue, a lot of things - Kabul, Baghdad - started to look like nails too. We developed and perfected this art of dismantling foreign militaries and governments because, well, we could do it, and we could do it really well. This seems like the kind of thing that will keep happening when we have a military that is very, very good at the operational and tactical levels of warfare, but political leadership that would like to substitute those abilities for strategy. We blind ourselves to the possibility that the fact the US government gets itself into a lot of trouble trying to run Rumsfeldian "rapid dominance" wars or COIN operations might say less about how the military needs to change and adapt and more about how our decision-makers and our decision-making methodologies do.

Ultimately, I am not incredibly worried about COIN becoming the end-all be-all of US military operations and US grand strategy. The political stain on the Iraq war and the frustrating slog in Afghanistan will keep a COIN strain of victory disease from developing, Petraeus and the success of the surge aside. But the tendency of US policymakers to treat military capabilities as solutions for the gaps in their strategic thinking, rather than as instruments to be used in conjunction with others, will probably remain.

meh. COIN is a software

meh.
COIN is a software patch for the Epic Fail of the Bush Doctrine, aka the Grand Misadventure of the Manifest Destiny of Judeo-xian Democracy in MENA.

Iraq was DT&E (design test and evaluation) for COIN.
Did COIN work in Iraq?

Just because I have a big

Just because I have a big dick, doesn't mean I'm going to be sticking it inside every smelly hole out there. I'm going choose my fights. If I do stick my dick inside some wet pussy, it's going to be good-- and worth it.

well boiz....given that your

well boiz....given that your contract with the porn industry electorate REQUIRES you stick your huge penis into every mandated hole, praps an adaptive selection of appropriate condoms would be the best solution.

If you think

If you think counterinsurgency is problematic, is that because counterinsurgency is itself problematic or do counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan highlight a larger problem within U.S. foreign and defense policy?

Actually, the succeeding post helps answer this question. When you observe that "the actions of local actors are more significant than those of U.S. policymakers," you cut to the essence of the dilemma.

Here's how I see it. Our military excels at tasks in which its own actions are crucial to determining outcomes. A conventional battle between opposing forces is such a scenario. It cultivates a can-do attitude among its members that emphasizes their own control of their destiny. And that has led to repeated interventions abroad, in which overwhelming force has been applied to further policy goals. These have almost always worked, in their own limited fashion. We drove Noriega from Panama, intervened in Grenada, expelled Iraq from Kuwait, deposed Saddam, and so on. We excel at that first step.

The military, however, fares poorly when it shifts to tasks in which its own actions are of secondary importance, useful mostly in enabling the success of others. Once an abusive regime has been driven from power, we tend to struggle to secure the population or to install a more functional government.

Counterinsurgency is the best available doctrine for such missions, precisely because it acknowledges their extreme difficulty, and our lack of ultimate control over their outcome. If you're going to attempt such a task, you'd better have a doctrine that at least recognizes the limits of your control, and attempts to compensate for it. It calls for an extreme commitment of men and materiel, and a lengthy timeframe. And it focuses on long-term outcomes, measured not principally by military objectives, but by the political goals they are meant to advance.

But COIN isn't merely "a response to operational difficulties," it's a response to strategic errors. When you note that "we did not initially deploy to either country to practice counterinsurgency -- we embraced counterinsurgency operations after screwing things up in the early years of both wars," you're essentially making that point. We entered into conflicts in the illusion that we could exercise primary control over their outcomes; we were forced to shift strategies and craft novel doctrines on the fly because that turned out to be wildly hubristic. If either war had been sold as a counterinsurgency - with the resources, casualties, and timeframe that necessarily entails - it would never have been launched. In fact, I can't think offhand of a democracy that has ever deliberately launched a counterinsurgency campaign - they are exclusively reactive attempts to salvage overly ambitious operations.

So contra Bacevich or Gentile or Cicero, I don't see the up-front temptation for policymakers. In fact, quite the contrary. When COIN is explicitly considered upfront, the war doesn't happen. It's conventional warfare, with its beguiling promise of clear outcomes and control, that tends to lead us toward aggressive overreach. At worst, COIN prolongs conflicts, by offering the hope for a successful resolution when conventional methods have plainly failed. And that's a real and worthwhile concern. But it's not the one being voiced here.

One of the baseline

One of the baseline critiques offered up by conservatives during the 1980s was this: New Deal policy makers support interventionist policies w/o much consideration of cost or benefit, because no one, if given the choice, chooses to sit on the bench (and policy makers don't pick up the tab for playing).

Washington fell into a similar trap after 9/11. The amount of additional monies spent by the federal government on security (broadly construed) during the past nine years, ie. beyond the trend line, is probably several $ trillion. Am I being cynical if I suggest that most who believe in the "long war", at this point, have gotten a check for it?

@Daivd Sutton - There is a

@Daivd Sutton - There is a reason we can't staff the nation building with others, because they start getting killed and they bug out. The guns need to be there to keep the peace. Those without the guns did not sign up expecting that they would be a target.

It might work if you have local partners you can trust. But the language and capability gap between our forces and the Afghani are too wide; they can't be used and they can't be trusted. So we end up with nothing, except an 19 year old Marine trying to explain to a village elder that thye should open the market back up.

I think there might be a bit

I think there might be a bit too much hand wringing going on here. COIN is the hammer du jour. That much is certain. But these wars will eventually wind down, and many think that will happen sooner rather than later.

I'd invite those that think the institutionalization of COIN in the US military makes future expeditionary warfare more likely to put their money where their mouth is, so to speak. What are the conflicts the US is going to get into because of COIN, and what's the causal mechanism?

North Korea: if it happens, not because of COIN
Iran: ditto
Un-named contingency in the Pacific Ocean: That's a conflict for the Navy and the boys in blue.

So if the US is unlikely to do expeditionary COIN in the future, the question becomes whether it is a good idea to institutionalize the hard-fought lessons learned over the last decade. And the answer to that has to be yes, unless you really want to cut off your nose to spite your face. The world is unpredictable and even if we try as hard as we can to avoid future COIN situations, one will happen again. And when it does, better that we don't have reinvent the wheel. That's not to say COIN should dominate budgets, planning, or whatever.

But the notion that gaining COIN capabilities somehow makes US involvement in military conflicts more likely strikes me as far too simplistic.

"But the notion that gaining

"But the notion that gaining COIN capabilities somehow makes US involvement in military conflicts more likely strikes me as far too simplistic."

'zactly.
Why does the mil have COIN doctrine at all? To patch Non-working strategies. COIN was deployed to remedy the failed Bush Doctrine in Iraq. COIN is being attempted in Afghanistan because the Bush Doctrine and conventional warfighting failed in the Graveyard of Empires. I don't think the military is going to push COIN style aggro-colonialism. Its too expensive and too fuzzy. The outcome is non-determinate in a sense....besides....does COIN work?
Is there a proven example?
Did COIN actually "work" in Iraq? Iraq was software DT&E(design test and evaluation) for COIN.
In your opinion, Abu Muqawama, did COIN in Iraq deliver the sought after results?

Whether a "fantastic, all

Whether a "fantastic, all volunteer military" represents a temptation for policymakers depends on who the policymakers are.

With a single exception -- the 1983-4 deployment to Lebanon -- major American military deployments before 2001 were either in our immediate neighborhood (Grenada and Panama), or in response to situations that had become major disasters first (Iraq in 1990, Somalia, the Balkans in the mid-1990s). Avoidance of significant American casualties was a leitmotif of American policy toward all these situations. The greatest risk in this regard was run during the Gulf War, and I well remember the relief among both policymakers and the general public that losses were so low. This may, ironically, have been a factor in the first Bush administration's decision to declare victory, send most of the huge army deployed to the Middle East home, and then stumble into an extended, very large deployment intended to contain the country we had just defeated.

The second Bush administration was different. I think there are many people associated with the military now and in the past have great difficulty coming to terms with this. Bush was congenial to them on a personal level; he was antagonistic to political liberals as many of them are; and he was enthusiastic about the extravagant use of symbolism and open flattery from the Commander in Chief to which some in the American military are susceptible. But as Commander in Chief, Bush was a nightmare. The record of his administration is more familiar to readers of this blog than to most Americans, so I feel able to save time by not reciting here all of Bush's mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Suffice it to say here only that Bush was different, not in degree but in kind, from his predecessors in how he thought about the military as a policy tool, how he used it, and how his administration made decisions about how to use it.

I don't blame military people who have borne the brunt of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for worrying that the structure of their institution might have had something to do with how those wars have turned out for the United States, or that this in turn might have disturbing implications for the future. Nor do I think them entirely wrong to worry about these things. They would be wrong only if they fretted about an all-volunteer military (or a Navy with eleven carrier battle groups, or a military with counterinsurgency expertise) without considering the likelihood of its use by a Commander-in-Chief approaching Bush's level of recklessness and incompetence. My personal opinion is that future Presidents for many years to come will look on how the Bush administration chose to deploy and direct the American military as their primary example of how not to do things. I would consider changes, structural and otherwise, in any or all of the services in that context.

Can we influence the

Can we influence the formation of a government with an acceptable human rights/democracy/security profile without coding in a timebomb of legitimacy problems? Hands on, hands off, toe on the scale?

COIN is fine and doing

COIN is fine and doing everything it can - it's not the problem. the problems in afghanistan and pakistan are much bigger then and beyond the scope of operational and tactical doctrine.

the problem is that we're backing a preposterously corrupt, election-stealing, opium-trafficking, competition-assassinating wannabe dictator, who long ago decided that playing all sides against each was the best way to ensure that he'd stay in power. karzai is our dude there, and he's diem-level bad. nothing COIN does can change that. we bet the house on him, for reasons that are completely beyond me.

don't blame COIN for an incoherent political strategy!

I partially agree with this,

I partially agree with this, as this brings COIN back to the integration of strategic policy with the methods of enacting that policy.

--The problem with COIN is not that it can be done better or worse. Of course their are methods and strategies that are sometimes successful. The problem is that the very idea of COIN inclines policy makers to get involved in stretched versions of the national interest that require astronomical levels of resources to even have a CHANCE at succeeding.--

However, much of the COIN mindset I see in theater today (having spent 18 months of the last two years in AF) is that *WE* are responsible for everything and have to do everything to make it turn out right. The quiet implication is that our host nation is full of incompetency and inability. This may be true, it may not- but it is a self fulfilling prophecy if allowed to gain hold in the minds of the coinistas and participants in the conflict. I see an internal war raging in Afghanistan right now between the theorists and the tacticians- the theorists are hell bent on turning the responsibility over to the host nation, while the tacticians try to first realize stability before conducting the transition.

What falls between the cracks is the development of the people to maintain any stability, much less the infrastructure and development that must be in place after the muscle of the military leaves. The coalition/US brings in engineers from their native country and hires locals for manual labour only, with only rare exceptions. I see very little effort to educate or train the host nation people to conduct sustainment operations after the military draw down, and even less effort to educate the host nation population in WHY they should care or invest in their own country.

For example, theorists attempt to establish agricultural alternatives and crop improvements, a truly noble cause. However, this is done without establishing architecture to get the crops to market, assist the national or international markets in moving the crops. Having no significant market for their new crops, the farmers see no incentive to move their crops beyond the local market or bazaar, much less increase production (meaning greater labour).

During the Soviet invasion, Kabul University had a thriving engineering department of six departments, shut down during the first part of the Soviet era. Now, the University is struggling to re-establish itself, most of the teaching based on lecture notes written decades ago. Most of the engineering students have never seen a transistor board, signal generator, etc., in anything except a book, blackboard diagram or on the internet. Yet it is the product of these institutions we are placing our hopes for the future of the country. This is not to knock these institutions, they are doing the best they can, this is to highlight the breakdown between theory and practice.

If we are to conduct a successful transition of authority and responsibility, it is paramount that we develop the individuals who will be custodians of the daily activities- the sewage engineers, the transportation companies, the import/exporters, the civil engineers, and the list goes on. This can only be accomplished through a better integration of strategic and tactical efforts, following a clear roadmap to a definite objective.

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Independence Day!

"So why did we ever start

"So why did we ever start nation-building in Af anyway? We never needed to take down the (truly nasty) Taliban before, so why after?"

We are in Afghanistan nation building right now because policy makers have linked Afghanistan stability to Pakistan stability. We tried propping up Pakistan's military dictatorship, but the Taliban began operating there. Since National Security theorists' worst nightmare is that a nuclear country destabilize and allow non-state actors access to nukes, we have now securitized the stability of TWO more countries. Once again, this is an 'Oh shit' rearguard action. Pakistan would not have nukes now if the Bush Sr. administration had taken non-proliferation seriously, the Taliban wouldn't be in Pakistan if we hadn't abandoned Afg. prematurely for Iraq, or if we had locked down Afghanistan with the resources available when OBL skittered out to the mountains. So the military is stuck trying to carry out a mission for which it is ill suited (nation building/policing multiple ethnicities/economic development- now all part of COIN).

Petraeus just declared that he would accomplish victory after his confirmation. Can Do.

@Cicero, Pakistan got nukes

@Cicero,

Pakistan got nukes under Clinton. As did India, the two may be related. And Bush took non-proliferation seriously enough that he put Bolton in charge of it, which at least stopped Qaddafi, and may have put Iran on the pause mode.
Oh that and the minor point of taking down Saddam over WMD. That's how serious he was about actual non-proliferation. He also at least called North Korea out on NOT stopping their nuclear program that Clinton bribed them to stop. They...didn't.

That's pretty serious non-proliferation.

You Libs. I hate to be so negative on Independence Day...but..you are childish punks. Sophomores with the reigns of world power. Uh huh. At least try and remember who was President when things during your lifetime happened. You must have been at least born under Clinton. He's a Democrat BTW.

LOL. but Bush didn't pursue paper treaties. No. Paper doesn't wrap stone, or nukes. Not in real life. Paper is strictly academic. Like most of DC these days.

Here's Pakistan getting nukes...

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/

Pakistan developed its

Pakistan developed its nuclear capacity and supplied tech to Iran before Clinton. They tested in 1998 in response to the Indian test.

COIN is problematic because

COIN is problematic because it seems like a numbers game and the numbers are against us (too few troops, too little time). That’s not to say enormous progress hasn’t been made in Iraq and isn’t still possible in Afghanistan. That’s a testament to the twenty-four hour operations ongoing in those places every single day. The unknown seems to be the people and how badly they want their own security. Is the will there to isolate the extremists? Constant banter about redeployment timelines undermines the fence sitters’ willingness to put their necks out to join us--but who can say where that tipping point is. Assessments that security is better than it’s ever been in Iraq aren’t the same as saying it’s secure. Secure could mean movements “off the operating base” are in sedans and really secure might be civilian US advisors living on the economy. We aren’t there. To get there could take time and troop levels we don’t have. That aside, I’m cautiously optimistic as we draw down in Iraq. Iraqis’ elections and new freedoms may’ve taken root. Best case, the Iraqi government in place after our exit will be a reliable ally of the US. If not, you have to ask, despite the incredible sacrifice of blood and treasure, ‘what was the point?’ If, on the other hand, Iraq holds, what a game changer that might be for the region…
Below the national level, at present, there’s simply no solution other than a military one. In Iraq throughout 2009, for example, I didn’t see any corps of civilian experts there poised and capable of independently filling the advisory vacuum once brigades and transition teams depart; sufficient numbers of civilian advisors don’t exist at province and district level to achieve professional police, good governance, or essential services. Such advisors as there were in 2009 Iraq remained entirely dependent on the military for their movement and life support. If funded, contractors could be hired by the State Department to close the gap but they require a permissive environment that doesn’t yet exist. In the time remaining, the larger question is how many more times will young sergeants and captains willingly deploy while we continue muddling through. I don’t think we yet have that answer. Had not the economy tanked at a fortuitous time, I wonder how many more mid-career NCO’s and officers might have voted with their feet a year or two ago and might still (recall the mass “dot com” exodus in 1999-2000). Even among career-minded field grade officers with great enthusiasm for the mission, I get the sense that few are seriously considering remaining beyond the 20 year mark given the astronomical burdens on their families to date. Were I a policy maker, I would not automatically take it for granted that the “fantastic All Volunteer force” will be there “next time” nor can I conceive of a future Congress going along willingly given the costs in times that require greater fiscal discipline.
R,
Rob Blackmon
Major, US Army
Student, US Army Command and General Staff School, Fort Belvoir VA
The views expressed above are my own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the US Government

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