Center for a New American Security

At what point do you just

At what point do you just acknowledge the devastating flaw at the heart of all your strategies, Andrew?
The Bush Doctrine had design flaws so deep it could never work, and insofar as COIN is a patch on the Bush Doctrine, it is useless as well.
Here's my COIN adaptation....the invisible footprint....we stay, but we are so deep in the culture we are invisible.
Exploit the islamic substrate of Afghanistan instead of warring against it.
Make it easier for the people to vote for al-Islam instead of expecting them to vote for western cultural chauvinism fantasies.
Go native.
Bricolage the existing networks to support your goals, instead of trying to build new ones.

The debate, even at the

The debate, even at the margins, still shows that the overriding concern amongst decision makers is political. They all need to protect their reputations collectively and individually, that is paramount. Other concerns such as national interest, security, war against terrorism, actual American economy, and civil liberties are given lip service, but no "serious" person will fall on the sword and admit how badly they, as part of the collective, f'd up in the past 10 years, sinning against the public either by commission or omission. Walter Jones is one notable exception to this sordid rule. When describing the situation that brought "us" here, what we do get is a lot of passive tense constructions, "mistakes were made," we, as in every person in the West and therefore, thankfully, not limited to our bone-headed leadership, "took our eyes off the ball" in Afghanistan to go play in Iraq.

So "we" will remain, doling out other people's money to bandits and gangsters, and maintain our potemkin village in Kabul. At least realtors in Dubai can breathe easily.

Peon that I am, I don't sit in these grave councils of the marginally wise and rational, but I am curious as to how our leaders and the chattering classes can be so certain of things. I thought the most recent idea, and a sane one at that, was the notion that the locals have some degree of input into how things play regarding our grand interventionist strategies in the Dar al Islam.

Well said - no US politician

Well said - no US politician is going to advocate total withdrawal from Afghanistan. Even those who position themselves as advocating such are often enough arguing for a Predator drone campaign in Pakistan that, if it was using real aircraft, is launching enough strikes to be on par with any of our little wars in the '90s.

As the recent NBER study (ewww, quants!) confirms, civilian casualties create revenge attacks, and the recent story about Afghan troops getting bombed does not exactly inspire confidence in proposed strategies of letting Afghans do the fighting while we do the bombing.Particularly if US lives are no longer at stake, the withdrawal of US troops would simply be a signal for the US to fight a "non-war" in Afghanistan and Pakistan with less incentives for restraint and less local knowledge or capability to protect the Afghan populace.

Here's a choice one -

Here's a choice one - Richard Engel, chief foreign correspondent at NBC, referred to the "Soviet sphere of influence" on MSNBC the other night - that's who Karzai might turn to if we stick to a withdrawal date, he thinks... the Soviets! Ha ha ha ha.... Cold War paranoia redux... did someone miss the fall of the Berlin Wall or what? Maybe Engel needs to pick up a copy of Steve Coll's Ghost Wars? Or maybe he too is a "clown stuck in 1985"?

Engel: "President Karzai has made it clear that he's looking beyond U.S. forces. He's looked to Pakistan, he's had meetings with Iran, clearly he likes the benefits of having U.S. troops here, but if you keep convincing Karzai that we're leaving, that's - there are other options. There's the Soviets, the Soviet sphere of influence..."

If Engel read Ghost Wars, he would know that we should have backed this guy, not the ISI and Saudi fanatics that we allowed to take over Afghanistan in the 1990s.

It's debatable how much this goes back to Taliban-Unocal oil pipeline efforts, but the press has sure gone silent on that. Even James Risen, whose "State of War" was an authoritative expose on the leadup to the Iraq invasion, didn't bother to mention anything about pipeline politics in Afghanistan in his recent article on Afghanistan mineral wealth, not that either project seems likely now or in the near future - but maybe the agenda is more long-term?

If we have a long-term economic agenda to protect, why not garrison the Middle East and Central Asia? Unless, of course, the economic cost of garrisoning outweighs the economic gains to be obtained, in which case the economic factors alone would call for withdrawal... unlike in Iraq, with all that sweet, sweet oil, right near the surface, lowest production costs in the world... the smell of gasoline, it drives men wild...

P.S. Have you seen this footage of an Afghanistan fuel convoy? That's how it is...

"and what about the long

"and what about the long view? al-Islam is the fastest growing world religion and has nearly 2 billion congregants.
better to make peace with Islam now I think.
Afghanistan is an opportunity for that."

I try not to comment on things like this, but this was hilarious.

You think that "making peace" with certain factions in Afghanistan will satiate the multifarious concerns of two billion people with hundreds of different ethnicities and various sectarian differences that are perfectly willing to kill each other, because somehow US "peacemaking" will trigger some sort of Secret Muslim Hive Mind that will get them all to agree to be friends with America?

This sort of logic is just as simplistic and ridiculous as the neoconservative caricatures of "Islam" as a monolithic bloc. You can't "make peace with Islam" anymore than you can "make peace with Christendom."

DPT, im not saying

DPT, im not saying that.....im saying JUST STOP FIGHTING ISLAM.
the GWOT was always a practical war on al-Islam...that is all COIN and the Bush Doctrine ever were...replacing islamic government with something else....quasi-secular judeoxian democracies i guess.
Now, why not islamo-centric COIN, the invisible footprint?
Use the existing substrate....the local mosques are the most powerful influence nodes in local communities.
Like you said, ask them what they want. Like Gen Petraeus and company asked the sheiks and tribal leaders in Anbar.

I project, by 2020, China

I project, by 2020, China will be the number one oil-consuming nation, just as it is already for many other industrial commodities today.

That means by then, China will be economic hegemon over the Persian Gulf.

USA should get out of the ME and concentrate on fixing its domestic economic crisis, especially getting post-oil as much as possible.

Let the Chinese worry about the Muslims.

"I project, by 2020, China

"I project, by 2020, China will be the number one oil-consuming nation, just as it is already for many other industrial commodities today."

OK, following you so far.

"That means by then, China will be economic hegemon over the Persian Gulf."

Well, that's a little backwards, isn't it? That might make China want to be economic hegemon over the Persian Gulf, but to be the actual hegemon you need power projection capability with ships and bases and local allies and such. It will be some time before China has that, especially enough to challenge the US presence there.

"USA should get out of the ME and concentrate on fixing its domestic economic crisis, especially getting post-oil as much as possible.

Let the Chinese worry about the Muslims."

Since US allies such as Japan and economic partners such as India will still be reliant on that oil, things won't be that clear cut...

More on China's rail plans.

More on China's rail plans.

Keid A - much easier said

Keid A - much easier said than done. Remember the same neighborhood (Central and South Asia) that we're busy trying to pacify and stabilize now is the same one China has to send those railways through. Even China has trouble pacifying at times the border regions that said lines would have to go through.

China would have to build a reliable overland energy and trade network that goes through India, Pakistan, Central Asia and Xinjiang. One that is more vulnerable to terrorist attacks or countries choosing to 'shut off' pipelines than naval transit. Additionally, China would have to be able to project its land power across thousands of miles into the Persian Gulf to have the same hegemonic presence the US does. And it's supposed to do this across an unruly province, a nuclear power that considers itself China's rival, and Central Asia. As reliably as the US can by sea.

Color me skeptical. Even Halford Mackinder, that doomsayer about the Central Eurasian "Heartland," admitted a power able to girdle Eurasia with railways could only be successful if it could muster those resources for a fleet strong enough to resist the intervention of the peripheral, insular seapowers. And China is still a ways off from being able to have hegemonic influence in India's neck of the woods, let alone the Persian Gulf, whether by land or by sea. I consider myself pretty paranoid about great power politics, but you gotta take a deep breath and relax.

"Keid A - much easier said

"Keid A - much easier said than done. Remember the same neighborhood (Central and South Asia) that we're busy trying to pacify and stabilize now is the same one China has to send those railways through. Even China has trouble pacifying at times the border regions that said lines would have to go through.

China would have to build a reliable overland energy and trade network that goes through India, Pakistan, Central Asia and Xinjiang. One that is more vulnerable to terrorist attacks or countries choosing to 'shut off' pipelines than naval transit. Additionally, China would have to be able to project its land power across thousands of miles into the Persian Gulf to have the same hegemonic presence the US does. And it's supposed to do this across an unruly province, a nuclear power that considers itself China's rival, and Central Asia. As reliably as the US can by sea."

DPT, as an American patriot, your comments give me hope. If our leaders weren't so short-sightedly venal, arrogant, and bellicose they would realize that we could basically throw this tar baby that is Islamic extremism and being the outside hegemon in C. Asia on the Chinese and the Indians. We would thereby protect our own people, (the DOD's purported raison d'etre), and cripple what appears to be our two biggest economic rivals in years to come. In fact, perhaps we could get the imbalance of trade with the Chinese back in our favor. Of course this won't be even an option on the table, the Military, Congressional, Prison, Wall Street complex might not have so many opportunities to transfer wealth from the more productive members of society to their own coffers, and the Military along with the hordes of patriotic, knuckle-dragging Archie Bunkers out there wouldn't be able to get off on dominating foreigners while keeping up what amounts to the largest make jobs programs in US history

We've seen light at the

We've seen light at the tunnel's middle : "... success in moving to an enduring (if limited) military presence is achievable." ???

Remarkable in what that implies, that the current effort isn't enduring/sustainable, isn't sufficiently limited, and we're maybe not yet discernably trending towards those 'successful' achievements? We shouldn't become morose, because there is still hope to achieve them?

Sincerity test: Are we now training sufficient Urdu, Pashto and Farsi speakers to support the best-case limited military presence we hope to achieve? If not, what's the odds we'll get anywhere near that 'achievable' enduring presence, vs achieving the Russian pariah status at the end of their far less expensive war?

I'll go look for the Barno op-ed, and hope for enlightenment. But it seems to me that the Russians, nuclear islamic Pakistan, China, Iran or Arabia could all have reason to frustrate and stalemate our W. Pashtunistan project, and have the ability to do so at a tenth or less of what it will cost us. Lotsa folks would like to see us economically bled into a peaceable state. Recipricocity, we used to call it. Hell, a long messy Pashtun civil war across the Durand line might strike even India as better than another nuclear face-off across the Kashmir frontier.

Is this Team Obama's 1964 moment, where we've escalated so we can negotiate from strength? We need a deal, not an enduring limited war that drags on another ten years. Same for the little folks over there. Sharia flavor-of-the-month sucks, but the law of war doesn't educate girl children either.

"Sharia flavor-of-the-month

"Sharia flavor-of-the-month sucks, but the law of war doesn't educate girl children either."

shariah beats the hell out of starving, being raped, sold into slavery, or blown up by a drone.
WHAT THE HELL BUSINESS IS IT OF OURS YOU IDIOTS??????

"China's power in Eurasia

"China's power in Eurasia derives from the market forces that are making its economy grow and are rapidly reorganizing the economic and political structures in Eurasia into a China-centric system. In that sense China has no need to "pacify" the regions in question."

I'm really going to have to disagree with you on that one. For one, China most certainly does have to pacify Xinjiang and Tibet, and it has a leg up there because it can use the settlement weapon to gradually shift the ethnic balance in those regions. For another thing, Islamic extremist groups will have just as much incentive to oppose Chinese influence in Central Asia as they do American interests, Chinese hegemony is not much of an improvement over American hegemony, and China has been oppressing Muslims every day for the past sixty decades in Xinjiang. Again, the economics do point to the kleptocratic and autocratic regimes gravitating towards China's economic orbit, but ultimately these regimes do get overthrown and do have to put up with internal resistance, whether its a Russian, American, or Chinese hegemon bankrolling them.

"The Russians, Indians, Iranians, the Stans, etc. Are only too happy to enter into the voluntary trade agreements with China. Even India's rivalry has been no real barrier to growing trade."

Big difference between allowing trade to go and allowing China to "peacefully rise" its way to continental hegemony. All countries have red lines where foreign economic power becomes a perceived strategic threat. Russia is really unhappy about China's highway system because it runs parallel to the Russian border and would serve Chinese military action in Siberia and the Far East, and there is grumbling about making military preparations accordingly. Similarly, India is happy to trade with China to its own advantage but it is not going to put aside its differences with its mortal enemy Pakistan so it can build a pipeline so that Chinese oil does not have to transit the Straits of Malacca. The Indians need the pipeline a lot less than the Chinese do, so while bilateral trade will grow, we should not assume India will just acquiesce to a Chinese-determined new Asian order. The Indian armed forces are certainly not planning on it now, and trade isn't convincing them.

"China has the skills, the capital, the markets to finance the projects. It is willing to provide the labor if necessary."

That latter point is precisely where the hype about China's ability to conquer by wealth starts to fade. China doesn't just provide the labor if necessary, it prefers to send Chinese migrants out to work at Chinese firms so that these firms don't need to answer to local governments about labor standards or pay. This has caused a lot of resentment, and Vietnam is a good example (among others) where historical and geopolitical grievances towards China are starting to tip the political mood against economic cooperation as prime objective.

"In a crisis its 2+ million-strong PLA could be used to establish order in unruly places, but it is only a small part of the
overall picture."

The Chinese army has enough trouble mobilizing troops to earthquakes within its own borders thanks to its poor airlift capability and training. Nor do I imagine the "2+ million strong PLA" would have any more luck in re-establishing order in a place like Afghanistan than the United States would, except by a display of force that would pit it in permanent conflict with other regional actors.

"I would say it is only Pakistan and Afghanistan that are currently unstable enough to have seriously hindered China's expansion."

Which, even if those are the sole roadblocks, (besides cooling relations with Russia and military rivalry with India and maritime security concerns all around its coasts) are still HUGE issues, particularly China is banking on circumventing US naval hegemony by relying primarily on pipelines.

"'Pacification' is USA's problem, because the USA is trying to establish a coercive order."

Many of China's neighbors to the south and east are more afraid of Chinese coercion than American coercion, and if China were to bankroll the corrupt regimes of Central Asia, it would probably find some unhappy neighbors to the west as well, even if their governments are sanguine - which means the threat of terrorism and insurgency is still there. And again, if you want to build an oil pipeline from Iran to China, you sure as hell have to worry about pacification and security in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the security situation between Pakistan, China and India.

Yes, China will pull some neighbors into its orbit and make a lot of money, I'm not denying that. But there's no way it's going to be able to establish the kind of grand Eurasian order you describe, all that growth can't erase the security dilemma, great power tensions with India, Japan and perhaps Russia, or solve the problem of Islamic extremism in South and Central Asia. China will still be held in check by US naval power and its difficulties in power projection. Foreign powers still need navies to police the Persian Gulf, and until China gets that the best it can do is finance anti-access capabilities that try to keep the US out. For all China's wealth, it still has a lot of military modernization and expansion to do, and a lot of internal social problems to solve. Expanding trade links will make a lot of money, but it won't usher in a harmonious, land-bound order of pipeline and highway linked Chinese tributary states.

American troops will end up staying because Afghanistan is still going to be a violent place in a neighborhood with a sprinkling of nasty residents, and China will get to deal with those problems and more if it ever is so lucky as to supplant the US as hegemon.

DPT, I think our differences

DPT,
I think our differences are basically about time-frames. Your analyses are OK as a short-term picture. I tend to project trends a few decades into the future, so I see a different sort of world then.

The only short-term prediction I would make, is that massive spending cuts and/or tax increases are imminent for the USA. The current deficit trajectory is unsustainable for more than a very few years. Those cutbacks will likely bring an end to the Asian adventure.

Even if US would like to continue the wars, the NATO allies are desperate to cut spending.

You can't keep borrowing from the Chinese to pay for Asian wars. Your bankers won't allow it.

David Sutton Then is is a

David Sutton
Then is is a woman's crusade we are executing in MENA? Are you some freaking Hirsi Ali groupie?
Women and girls are treated WORSE in Afghanistan than before we started this clusterfark. We made the Taliban possible with our proxy war with the sovs and now we make the Taliban STRONGER every day we are there.
teh XX, sufis and jews in MENA ALWAYS get the worst of it when the reavers get out of their societal infrastructure cages.
Again, this is the conservative, fundamentalist mindset. Like the American Taliban (the tea party movement) in this country, who except for our rule of law would make women slaves and abortion and birth control illegal. Already they don't let their daughters go to sex education school.
You cannot replace a whole culture or a whole religion.
Except by genocide.

DPT you are another clueless

DPT you are another clueless moron.

"that love of freedom and choice might gain some ground on the dusty plains of both those countries."

they do love freedom.
freedom to raise their families outside of a war zone, freedom to practice their faith, freedom from bullshit american colonialism and proxy wars.
The Bush Doctrine IS just fucking colonialism and unrealistic western culture chauvinism, in spite of anything Bush said. And so is COIN, as long as it remains adversary to al-Islam.
Bush spent a trillion dollars, 5000 american soljah lives, and killed 100000 + iraqi citizens.
the iraqis put shariah in their constitution and made a national holiday of the day american troops left their cities.
islamic jusrisprudents STILL RUN THE COUNTRY.

The punchline here is that Sayyed Fadlallah was the religious guide, or marja’ al-taqlid, to numerous members of Iraq’s ruling Da’wa Party, including Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. This means that they looked to Fadlallah as a source of religious authority on matters relating to correct Islamic life and practice, and committed to following his edicts on those matters. It also meant that, in October 2008, when Fadlallah (along with several other ayatollahs) condemned the U.S.-Iraq security agreement in its then-current form and decreed that any agreement should call for an unconditional withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, the agreement had to be re-negotiated.
As I wrote at the time, the power of these ayatollahs to effectively scuttle an agreement of significant import to the security of the United States throws into stark relief what the Bush administration created in Iraq: a government dominated by Shia religious parties who take their guidance — and derive much of their legitimacy — from the opinions and edicts of a small handful of senior Shia clerics.

Why do you say that people

Why do you say that people favoring the US leaving AFGH are isolationist?
This definitely implies a bias. Isolationism is not a bad thing, or at least it wasn't in the past.
Leaving AFGH is sanity and not isolationism.
jim hruska

In summary, you might get

In summary, you might get the impression based upon things you read in the newspapers and on the interwebs that the debate on U.S. policy in Afghanistan spans the spectrum from those isolationists who think we should simply pack up and leave to those who would have us devote all our national treasure to U.S. and allied success. But those are not the real parameters of the debate:

Can you say "epistemic closure," boys and girls?

In the newspapers and on teh interwebs, people think. In the White House, the Pentagon and CNAS, they're stuck on stupid. All options within the "real parameters of the debate" or anywhere near them: stupid.

the real debate is at the margins, and the real question facing policy-makers is how best to reduce the U.S. and allied presence in Afghanistan over the near term while protecting U.S. and allied interests and weighing the costs and risks involved with each choice.

British in Basra, coming up soon. Can you say "indirect fire," boys and girls? I knew you could.

The British in Basra steadily reduced their footprint, in exactly this bureaucratic way and for exactly this bureaucratic reason. They wound up sitting on a FOB taking mortars and laughter. (Counterbattery fire, of course, would have been a massive human-rights violation.) Eventually they started to laugh too, and they had to leave. The Empire had become a joke. It was replaced by other forces - neither bureaucratic, nor funny.

Having completely renounced victory, USG has completely accepted defeat. Having completely accepted defeat, USG keeps its residual community organizers in Afpak for one reason: supporting B.H. Obama's campaign in 2012, so he doesn't have that stinky loser smell. If you are driving around Pashtoonistan waiting for that IED, you're working for ACORN. No justice, no peace! Free Mumia!

You cannot replace a whole

You cannot replace a whole culture or a whole religion.
Except by genocide.

Thank Zeus and Hera for that.

Walking Wounded i didnt find

Walking Wounded i didnt find the Barno op-ed very cheery.

Today 30,000 Taliban are fighting 140,000 Nato troops and an uneven mix of 200,000-plus Afghan military and police, while much of the government sits on the sidelines. This must change. Mr Karzai, in particular, must take ownership of battles that will inevitably cause civilian losses.

30,000 Talis are currently pwning 340,000 NATO and Afghani forces.

more bullshytt from Exum's

more bullshytt from Exum's twitter bar.
"The original plan for a post-Taliban Afghanistan called for rapid, transformational nation building. But such a vision no longer appears feasible, if it ever was. Many Americans are now skeptical that even a stable and acceptable outcome in Afghanistan is possible. They believe that Afghanistan has never been administered effectively and is simply ungovernable. Much of today's public opposition to the war centers on the widespread fear that whatever the military outcome, there is no Afghan political end state that is both acceptable and achievable at a reasonable cost."

because......what is consent of the governed when the governed are muslims?
that is the basic condition for self-governance.
Bush declared war on al-Islam, by wholly convolving terrorism with islamic fundamentalists, and seeking to replace evolved islamic governance with a secular model.
The only way COIN can work is by integrating Islam into its build of trusted local networks.

"that was just a random

"that was just a random aside, DPT."

Ah, care to elucidate your argument? Or do you just have nothing useful to add to the one I was talking about? Or was it just a plea for attention?

"im still torqued over your deliberate misreading of my statements about the War on Islam.
Islam has internal problems sure, but that is none of our bidness, right?"
we went to reform Islam? was that it?"

Sort of like your deliberate misreading of virtually everything I say? Where did I talk about reforming Islam? Please, tell me where I did. I don't care about reforming Islam. I don't even think it needs to be reformed. There's not even a single "Islam" to reform, and 99% of Muslims follow some form of Islam that is basically benign to US security.

I also don't care about solving Islam's internal problems. Please, point out to me where I did. Your totally unfounded assumption that Sutton and I are "the same person" has lead to a lot of assumptions on your part. When I critiqued the idea that the US can "make peace with Islam," I wasn't saying America needed to fix it or defeat it. You assumed I did.

What I was saying is that Islam, like Christianity, is not a unitary actor, and that if we're going to leave Afghanistan, we should not do it because it will "make peace with Islam." There are a thousand good reasons to leave Afghanistan but doing it to "make peace with Islam" isn't on there. We will make peace with some Afghans and Pakistanis. But the rest of "Islam" won't go along with it. Al Qaeda would still hate America. There would be other terrorist groups that would still hate America. There would be Muslims whose issues with the US are entirely unrelated to Afghanistan and have no sympathy for al Qaeda or the Taliban or Sunni Muslims, like the Ayatollah Khamenei, who would still emphatically not give a damn if America left Afghanistan. That was my critique - that leaving Afghanistan is not going to do anything to "make peace with Islam" outside Afghanistan and Pakistan, and even then there will still be people in Pakistan who hate the US.

You say I'm like David Sutton, but what do we have in common besides disagreeing with you? Go through and point it out, I'm eager to learn.

In the mean time, here's a cheat sheet on what I actually think: I was against invading Iraq. I oppose the terminology and notion of a "war on terror." I do not believe the US should use coercion to create democracy or promote Western values and systems in the Middle East or Central Asia. I am not automatically opposed to sharia, and I recognize that no amount of US firepower can make Afghan culture a bastion of secularism or gender equality. But you wouldn't know any of this, because instead of asking me what I thought about the war on terror, Islam, the 2nd Bush administration, Western values, or the fundamental purposes of US foreign policy, you assumed I was just another evil neocon, just like David Sutton and everyone else you don't like.

DPT You think that "making

DPT
You think that "making peace" with certain factions in Afghanistan will satiate the multifarious concerns of two billion people with hundreds of different ethnicities and various sectarian differences that are perfectly willing to kill each other, because somehow US "peacemaking" will trigger some sort of Secret Muslim Hive Mind that will get them all to agree to be friends with America?

By making peace with islam i mean stop convolving Islam with terrorism, because fighting terrorists means fighting islamic terrorists to you and Sutton.
The war on terror from the onset has been a war on Islam.
You are a colonialist, like Sutton...you believe in the intrinsic superiority of western culture.
You have been perfectly clear about that.

"making friends with America" is a dead giveaway. we made them enemies first.

"making friends with

"making friends with America" was intended to be facetious, if the statement "Secret Muslim Hive Mind" did get that through to you.

And where I again would like to challenge you is that "making peace with Islam" and its 2 billion people takes more than ending the war on terror (sources of anti-American feeling among some Islamic peoples, such as one-sided US support for Israel, upholding Arab dictatorships, opposing Iran's current government all predated and will outlive the war on terror). By the way, fighting terrorism to me means fighting Hutaree wackos, the secular PKK, Indian Maoists, narcoterrorist cartels, and all manner of other groups, because terrorism is just a tactic that anyone can use. Which is why I don't support a war on terror. Which I've already explained.

There is nothing "intrinsically superior" about Western culture or any culture, even if your esoteric (dare I say Straussian?) close-reading of these blog comments has lead you to think I believe otherwise. Which is why, again, I oppose deciding to use force (or even spending substantial sums of taxpayer dollars) on the basis of imposing Western values where they aren't wanted.