Several Afghan Strategies, None a Clear Choice - Peter Baker and Eric Schmitt, New York Times.

The president, vice president and an array of cabinet secretaries, intelligence chiefs, generals, diplomats and advisers gathered in a windowless basement room of the White House for three hours on Wednesday to chart a new course in Afghanistan. The one thing everyone could agree on: None of the choices is easy. Just six months after President Obama adopted what he called a “stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy” for Afghanistan and Pakistan, he is back at the same table starting from scratch.

The choices available to him are both disparate and not particularly palatable. He could stick with his March strategy, but his commander wants as many as 40,000 more troops to make it work. He could go radically in the other direction and embrace Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s idea of using fewer troops, focused more on hunting down leaders of Al Qaeda, but risk the collapse of the Afghan government. Or he could search for some middle-ground option that avoids the risks of the other two, but potentially find himself in a quagmire...

More at The New York Times.

On War, Obama Could Turn to GOP - Scott Wilson, Washington Post.

With much of his party largely opposed to expanding military operations in Afghanistan, President Obama could be forced into the awkward political position of turning to congressional Republicans for support if he follows the recommendations of the commanding US general there. Congressional Democrats have begun promoting a compromise package of additional resources for Afghanistan that would emphasize training for Afghan security forces but deny Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal the additional combat troops he has indicated he needs to regain the initiative against the Taliban insurgency.

The emerging Democratic consensus is likely to constrain the president as he considers how best to proceed with an increasingly unpopular war. On Wednesday, Obama chaired a three-hour discussion on Afghanistan with Cabinet members and senior officials at the White House. The meeting was largely a reassessment of the past eight years of American involvement in the region, with the president repeatedly probing his military and civilian advisers to justify their assumptions, according to one participant. This source said there was a recognition that the decision facing Obama is one of the most critical of his presidency...

More at The Washington Post.

Gates Doubts US's Afghan Strategy - Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall Street Journal.

President Barack Obama met with senior counselors for three hours Wednesday to launch his review of Afghan war strategy, amid indications that his defense secretary - the key link between the White House and the military - is among those undecided about the right approach. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the senior US commander in Kabul, is advocating a manpower-intensive counterinsurgency strategy that focuses on protecting the Afghan populace rather than hunting individual militants. He submitted a classified assessment over the weekend calling for up to 40,000 US reinforcements.

Mr. Obama met with senior military officials, diplomats and Cabinet members Wednesday as part of the review, which White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said was designed to "poke and prod" potential new approaches to the conflict. The discussion focused on the political and security situation on the ground, according to an administration official, with military commanders detailing the gains made by the insurgency and top diplomats discussing the Afghan election results that were marred by fraud claims. Mr. Obama focused his questioning on the current threat posed by al Qaeda and whether a resurgent Taliban would give al Qaeda leaders a new haven to regroup, the official said, which could indicate Mr. Obama is more concerned about the status of a threat to the US than overall stability in Afghanistan...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Obama, War Council Review Afghanistan Strategy - Julian E. Barnes and Christi Parsons, Los Angeles Times.

President Obama, amid political contretemps at home and expanding international turmoil over the disputed Afghan election, summoned his war Cabinet to the White House on Wednesday for a high-stakes review of his Afghanistan strategy. The session, which produced no announcements concerning additional troops or strategy, came on a day in which the highest-ranking American serving in the United Nations mission in Afghanistan was fired. Peter W. Galbraith, who had pushed for more aggressive steps to deal with alleged vote fraud, had clashed with Kai Eide, the senior UN representative in Afghanistan. in what one US official called "an ugly dispute."

The White House billed Obama's war strategy meeting as a major discussion of options, and it offered the first opportunity for Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top US and allied commander in Afghanistan, to address the president directly since submitting a military assessment that called for an expanded counterinsurgency campaign and pointed to the likely need for more troops. With no major decisions reached, another meeting was set for Wednesday. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama remains committed to his goals, to "disrupt, dismantle and destroy Al Qaeda and its extremist allies" and prevent the reemergence of safe havens...

More at The Los Angeles Times.

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White House Eyeing Narrower War Effort - Scott Wilson and Anne E. Kornblutm Washington Post.

Senior White House officials have begun to make the case for a policy shift in Afghanistan that would send few, if any, new combat troops to the country and instead focus on faster military training of Afghan forces, continued assassinations of al-Qaeda leaders and support for the government of neighboring Pakistan in its fight against the Taliban. In a three-hour meeting Wednesday at the White House, senior advisers challenged some of the key assumptions in Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's blunt assessment of the nearly eight-year-old war, which President Obama has said is being fought to destroy al-Qaeda and its allies in Afghanistan and the ungoverned border areas of Pakistan.

McChrystal, commander of the 100,000 NATO and US forces in Afghanistan, has asked Obama to quickly endorse his call for a change in military strategy and approve the additional resources he needs to retake the initiative from the resurgent Taliban. But White House officials are resisting McChrystal's call for urgency, which he underscored Thursday during a speech in London, and questioning important elements of his assessment, which calls for a vast expansion of an increasingly unpopular war. One senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the meeting, said, "A lot of assumptions - and I don't want to say myths, but a lot of assumptions - were exposed to the light of day." ...

More at The Washington Post.

McChrystal Rejects Scaling Down Afghan Military Aims - John F. Burns, New York Times.

The top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, used a speech here on Thursday to reject calls for the war effort to be scaled down from defeating the Taliban insurgency to a narrower focus on hunting down Al Qaeda, an option suggested by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as part of the current White House strategy review. After his first 100 days in command in Kabul, General McChrystal chose an audience of military specialists at London’s Institute for Strategic Studies as a platform for a public airing of the confidential assessment of the war he delivered to the Pentagon in late August, parts of which were leaked to news organizations.

General McChrystal, 55, did not mention Mr. Biden or his advocacy of a scaled-down war effort during his London speech, and referred only obliquely to the debate within the Obama administration on whether to escalate the American commitment in Afghanistan by accepting his request for up to 40,000 more American troops on top of the 68,000 already deployed there or en route. But he used the London session for a rebuttal of the idea of a more narrowly focused war. When a questioner asked him whether he would support scaling back the American military presence over the next 18 months by relinquishing the battle with the Taliban and focusing on tracking down Al Qaeda, sparing ground troops by hunting Qaeda extremists and their leaders with missiles from remotely piloted aircraft, he replied: “The short answer is: no.” “You have to navigate from where you are, not from where you wish to be,” he said. “A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy.” ...

More at The New York Times.

McChrystal Defends Military Goals in Afghanistan - Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times.

Speaking in London, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal said he opposes strategies that would require fewer troops and focus on fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership through drone attacks, airstrikes and similar approaches, according to transcripts and audio recordings of his remarks. Such an approach is favored by some Obama administration officials, including Vice President Joe Biden.

However, counterinsurgency advocates have said that a narrow war effort would leave the Afghan government unprotected from encroachment by the Taliban or other extremist organizations. The strategy debate is at the heart of a sweeping review requested by President Obama as the administration grapples with a tainted Afghan presidential election, escalating violence and mounting allied casualties...

More at The Los Angeles Times.

Back Your General and Send More Troops, David Miliband Urges Barack Obama - Francis Elliott and Michael Evans, The Times.

David Miliband urged President Obama to embrace a renewed “hearts and minds” strategy in Afghanistan as ministers indicated that they would not send more British troops unless the US adopted such an approach. The Foreign Secretary did not mention America by name but called on every government in the coalition to back troops, aid workers and diplomats in support of a clear plan. “We came into this together. We see it through - together,” he told the Labour conference in Brighton.

His words reflect a growing concern in the Government over Mr Obama’s apparent reluctance to garner political consent for a troop “surge”, which commanders say is needed to build up the Afghan Army and defeat the Taleban insurgency. General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, wants a revamped counter-insurgency - more forces on the ground engaging civilians and persuading the Taleban to switch sides - as opposed to a counter-terrorism strategy focused on al-Qaeda - reducing troop numbers and attacking militants mostly with drone missile strikes. Last night, David Cameron said that that the first thing he would do if elected prime minister would be to form a war cabinet. He said that it would comprise his Foreign Secretary, Chancellor, Defence Secretary, Home Secretary and the heads of the Armed Forces, MI6 and MI5...

More at The Times.

Hillary Clinton vs. Afghan Reality - Washington Times editorial.

In a PBS interview on Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton dismissed Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's detailed assessment of the situation in Afghanistan. "I respect that because clearly he is the commander on the ground," she said, "but I can only tell you there are other assessments from very expert military analysts who have worked in counterinsurgencies that are the exact opposite." She said the administration's goal "is to take all of this incoming data and sort it out." We aren't sure what the secretary of state means by "the exact opposite" of Gen. McChrystal's assessment. He concluded that a change was needed in US strategy, further resources were required, the Afghan forces need to be made more effective and that success is achievable.

Should we believe the exact opposite - that a change in strategy is not needed, resources are adequate, the Afghan forces are fine as they are, and we are headed for certain failure? Mrs. Clinton is correct that there is no lack of views on the subject. Counterinsurgency "experts" proliferated in Washington after the invasion of Iraq in the same way that the city was suddenly awash in counterterrorism "experts" after the Sept. 11 attacks. The White House is free to pick and choose from among them in the same way a patient can shop for doctors until he gets the diagnosis he likes. Unfortunately, this path is frequently fatal for the patient...

More at The Washington Times.

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Don’t Try to Arrest the Sea
An Alternative Approach for Afghanistan
by Major Mehar Omar Khan

An Alternative Approach for Afghanistan (Full PDF Article)

Over the last three months that I’ve spent in the United States, I’ve heard with concern and trepidation the growing calls for a possible pull out from Afghanistan. No sane citizen of our world, let alone a Pakistani infantry officer who may soon end up being another name on an ever-growing list of the fallen soldiers in the war against terror, enjoys thinking about the painful possibility of our world’s greatest military power and history’s most inspiring nation retreating in the face of an onslaught by Kalashnikov-wielding bearded barbarians riding on the back of motorcycles, hungry horses and perspiring mules. What is being realized with increasing intensity is the pain of a seemingly endless and bloody war for almost a decade now; the pressure of a US public opinion that’s almost irreversibly weary of war (at least for now); the misery of a mismatch between resources and mandate; the rising groans of despairing allies unwilling to persevere and, the scary scarcity of success stories. However what needs to be realized is the fact that abandoning Afghanistan will be an unmitigated tragedy.

For the United States, I believe, Afghanistan is not a case of ‘success or failure’. The USA is too big and too powerful to fail against a collection of miserable fanatics holed up in the treacherous mountains of Southern Afghanistan. It’s instead a case of doing too much with too little care and attention. It’s a challenge (still quite surmountable) aggravated by ditching smart choices and contracting wrong compulsions.

An Alternative Approach for Afghanistan (Full PDF Article)

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Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) The CIA finds job security in Afghanistan,

2) Can Israel get MAD with Iran?

The CIA finds job security in Afghanistan

On Sept. 30, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell made it clear that the objective of President Obama’s Afghanistan policy – “to disrupt, dismantle and destroy al Qaeda” – remains unchanged. According to Morrell, what is currently open for discussion among Obama senior advisers is “whether or not counterinsurgency is still the preferred means of achieving that end.”

As I discussed last week, Gen. Stanley McChrystal thinks counterinsurgency is the right course and has asked for at least 40,000 additional U.S. soldiers to implement this approach. It is now up to Obama to assess the risk of McChrystal’s strategy and weigh whether the costs measure up to the promised benefits.

While Obama and his team deliberate, other developments are underway that will either support McChrystal’s request or perhaps create alternatives. On Sept. 20, the Los Angeles Times reported on another “surge” into Afghanistan, this one by the Central Intelligence Agency. According to the article, the Central Intelligence Agency’s headcount in Afghanistan will increase to 700, led by increases in paramilitary officers, intelligence analysts, and operatives tracking the behavior of Afghan government officials.

The piece discussed how McChrystal, while in charge of special operating forces in Iraq, formed teams composed of CIA paramilitary officers and special operations personnel from the U.S. military. This fusion of capabilities is credited with improving intelligence collection and direct action operations against insurgent networks. McChrystal may now be using this same technique in Afghanistan.

But raising the CIA’s presence in Afghanistan to a higher plateau may set the stage for alternative approaches to U.S. strategy.

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The Greatest Afghan War - Michael Yon, Washington Times.

The coalition is weakening. While the US has gotten serious, the organism called NATO is a jellyfish for which the United States is both sea and prevailing wind. The disappointing effort from many partners is best exemplified by the partners who are pushing hardest: The British are fine examples. The British landed in Helmand province after someone apparently vouched that Helmand would be safe, and they believed it. Helmand is today the most dangerous province in Afghanistan.

British combat tours are arduous and the troops suffer in countless ways. The soldiers sweat and freeze in the desert filth; British rations are terrible; mail can be weeks late; and they fight constantly. Troops endure high casualties yet they keep fighting. These things are true. Some say the British "lost Helmand," but this is not true. Helmand was a mess before they arrived. British soldiers are strong but their government is pitiful, leading to an average effort in Afghanistan...

More at The Washington TImes.

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FRONTLINE Season Premiere
Obama's War
Tuesday, October 13, 2009, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS

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In Afghanistan, Training Can Look a Lot Like Fighting - Carlos Lozada, Washington Post opinion.

As President Obama and his national security team debate strategy for the war in Afghanistan, some of the options on the table involve a greater focus on training and strengthening the Afghan security forces. To an American public - and an administration - that may be reluctant to send more troops to a faltering, eight-year war, the notion of helping the Afghans fight for themselves could seem particularly attractive.

But it's an appeal that should be tempered. In a recent essay published by the security-focused Stimson Center in Washington, Robert Haddick, managing editor of the Small Wars Journal, reviews American experiences helping foreign security forces. Though he believes such initiatives will be a "growth business" in the years ahead, Haddick contends that if US policymakers hope such foreign forces can be a "competent and reliable substitute" for US military personnel, they will "frequently find themselves disappointed." ...

More at The Washington Post.

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Posted here with permission of The RUSI Journal - Israel’s Operation Cast Lead and the Gaza Strip Missile Conundrum (August 2009) by Sergio Catignani.

Israel’s assault on Gaza in early 2009, Operation Cast Lead, achieved significant tactical successes and managed to redeem the Israel Defence Forces’ poor performance during the 2006 Lebanon War. This paper examines Israel’s military and public information campaign and why Cast Lead failed to accomplish the government’s two main goals of stopping rocket attacks on Israel and the influx of weapons for resupplying Hamas.

Israel’s Operation Cast Lead and the Gaza Strip Missile Conundrum

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Threats in Southern Iraq Ahead of a U.S. Withdrawal
by Lieutenant Colonel John Johnson

Threats in Southern Iraq Ahead of a U.S. Withdrawal (Full PDF Article)

In November 2008, the U.S. and Iraq signed a bilateral security agreement, which set two major deadlines leading up to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq: the withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009 and the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by December 31, 2011. Additionally, in February 2009, President Obama announced that all U.S. combat forces would be withdrawn from Iraq by August 31, 2010, leaving several advisory and assistance units and headquarters elements in Iraq and setting the force ceiling at 50,000 for those remaining at the end of August 2010.

As was the case during the deployment of U.S. forces into Iraq in 2003, the majority of U.S. forces will likely exit Iraq through the south, moving equipment to Iraqi and Kuwaiti ports in the northern Arabian Gulf for loading onto ships and subsequent return to U.S. bases or to other theaters of operation. There are three primary threats to the combat forces drawdown in southern Iraq including: Shia militant groups opposed to the presence of U.S. forces; Iranian influence that ranges from helpful to disruptive and deadly to U.S. and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF); and intra-Shia violence, where Shia political groups compete for power and resources. This paper focuses on Shia militant groups and malign Iranian influence, and also briefly addresses the potential threat of intra-Shia politically motivated violence. Additionally, while the majority of violence in Iraq over the past six years has been concentrated in Baghdad, Anbar Province in western Iraq and in northern Iraq, the environment in southern Iraq described in this paper highlights how the complex, multi-faceted nature of the southern region can affect the impending withdrawal of U.S. forces.

This paper provides a description of the three major threats in southern Iraq, identifies several unlikely wildcard events which could alter the security situation, and concludes that while violence in the south is quite low when compared to historical trends and compared to the rest of Iraq, there remains several areas where U.S. forces should focus their efforts to ensure violence remains low ahead of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

Threats in Southern Iraq Ahead of a U.S. Withdrawal (Full PDF Article)

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10 Steps to Victory in Afghanistan - New York Times opinion.

1. Reform or Go Home - David Kilcullen: Counterinsurgency is only as good as the government it supports. NATO could do everything right - it isn’t - but will still fail unless Afghans trust their government. Without essential reform, merely making the government more efficient or extending its reach will just make things worse..

2. End Suicide Attacks - Robert Pape: To win in Afghanistan, the United States and its allies must prevent the rise of a new generation of anti-American terrorists, particularly suicide terrorists. The metric for measuring this threat is not the amount of territory controlled by the Taliban or Al Qaeda, but the number of people willing to be recruited as suicide terrorists...

3. If You Can’t Beat Them, Let Them Join - Linda Robinson: Within a year, we must persuade large numbers of insurgents to lay down their arms or switch to the government’s side. Afghanistan’s doughty warriors have a tradition of changing alliances, but success will require both military operations focused on the insurgent leadership and, even more important, incentives for fighters at the local level. Mid-level insurgents and their followers should be offered a chance to join a revised version of the Afghan Public Protection Force...

4. Pump Up the Police - Anthony Cordesman: For all the disputes over strategy, virtually everyone agrees that we need to strengthen the Afghan security forces, make them true partners and put them in the lead. Afghans want lasting security, and they want it to have an Afghan face. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander there, wisely wants to double the size of the Afghan Army and increase the police forces to 160,000 men. This requires not just money, but also a commitment to send more trainers, embedded advisers and partner units...

5. Kick Out Corruption - Nader Nadery: To defeat the insurgency, the Afghan government and its main partner, the United States, need to win the confidence of the public. Accountability must replace the widespread immunity enjoyed by officials who abuse their power. Despite all the problems with our recent election, the incoming government will have a chance to start fresh, and a proper vetting of all new officials is the place to begin...

6. Learn to Tax From the Taliban - Gretchen Peters: Skeptics of state-building proposals question whether the Kabul government - now almost fully dependent on foreign aid - will ever be able to support the military and police forces being trained. Yet there has been comparatively little investment by the international community in helping Kabul collect taxes, even though insurgents and corrupt officials have proved it can be done...

7. Polls Have the Power - Merrill McPeak: By and large, my generation of military professionals trained for and thought about what we might call “Type A” war - modern war, featuring the clash of mechanized forces fielded by industrial states. Happily, we never had to fight the Soviets on the northern German plain, though Operation Desert Storm showed we might have been pretty good at it, had the balloon gone up. In Afghanistan we’re fighting a “Type B” war that is in some of its essentials “postmodern.” Like postmodernism itself, the concept has a variety of meanings and may not represent a coherent set of ideas...

8. Take a Risk - Andrew Exum: While in Afghanistan last summer as part of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s initial assessment team, I found many American and other international units more focused on protecting themselves than protecting the Afghan population. Traveling through the allegedly secure city of Mazar-i-Sharif with a German unit, for example, was like touring Afghanistan by submarine...

9. Don’t Believe That We Can Afford to Lose - Frederick Kagan and Kimberly Kagan: America cannot achieve even the minimal objective of preventing Al Qaeda from re-establishing safe havens in Afghanistan without a substantial increase in forces over the coming year. The Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan’s south is growing. The Afghan and international forces there now cannot reverse that growth. They may not even be able to stem it. That is the assessment of the top American commander there, Gen. Stanley McChrystal...

10. Pakistani Patronage - Paul Pillar: The government of Pakistan, through its intelligence agency, has long been a patron of the Afghan Taliban, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal recently warned that the collaboration continues. Pakistan sees the relationship as a way of hedging its bets in Afghanistan, an asset in its confrontation with India. It is difficult to define a clear benchmark for ending that aid because the Pakistanis refuse to acknowledge that any relationship exists...

In full at The New York Times.

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Resourcing an Afghan Strategy - Interviewer: Greg Bruno, Council on Foreign Relations

In his assessment of the Afghan conflict, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, painted a dire picture and is recommending an infusion of U.S. forces on top of the sixty-eight thousand Americans already allocated. But six months after unveiling a new objective for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region - focused on protecting the public and preventing al-Qaeda from reconstituting in Afghanistan - President Barack Obama is reportedly reconsidering the U.S. commitment to the fight amid mounting Democratic opposition to a surge of U.S. forces. Six analysts - Peter R. Mansoor, Andrew J. Bacevich, Amin Tarzi, Thomas E. Ricks, Candace Rondeaux, and John A. Nagl - offer a range of strategic choices for U.S. planners in Afghanistan.

Peter Mansoor - Provided the Afghan government can gain legitimacy, and that it can be a government that the Pashtuns and other peoples that fuel the Taliban can support, then in the long run we can gain our objectives in Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban insurgency. But you have to ask that question first. Provided that such an Afghan government develops, because clearly the current government is not wholly legitimate...

Andrew Bacevich - Washington has gotten itself all tied up in knots over the wrong question. The issue that really cries out for attention is not what to do about Afghanistan. The question that cries out for attention is: eight years into the so-called 'long war,' does the long war make sense as a response to the threat posed by jihadism? And from my point of view, the idea that fixing Afghanistan will provide any sort of antidote to the threat posed by jihadism is simply absurd...

Amin Tarzi - We are not very clear now on our objectives. The objectives as stated to the Afghan side are confusing them. In my view, the objectives have to be very clear, and the goals have to be achievable. We need to achieve them because the issue of confidence, the time on that is running out...

Thomas Ricks - Can we achieve our goals in Afghanistan if they don't get the troops that [McChrystal] has asked for? No, [but] it is not clear you can achieve your goals even if you get the troops. The president laid out in March what the strategy was, and all McChrystal has done is said, 'Okay, if you want to implement the strategy, here are the resources required to do it.' Now the president seems to be saying, 'Well, I'm not sure I want to spend that many resources...

Candace Rondeaux - Three important factors will have to be considered in shaping the strategy for Afghanistan. First and often least discussed is the impact of the U.S. military presence on regional actors. Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, and India each have distinct regional and global interests that must also be taken into account when weighing the calculus of a further troop surge in Afghanistan...

John Nagl - There are always other options, but I personally believe that the counterinsurgency campaign has the best chance of success. For it to succeed it will have to be resourced to a greater extent than it has been to date. We need additional troops to build a bigger Afghan army faster, but we also need additional troops to provide a latticework, a framework of security within which those nascent Afghan security forces can operate...

In full at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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What I Saw at the Afghan Election - Peter W. Galbraith, Washington Post opinion.

... Afghanistan's presidential election, held Aug. 20, should have been a milestone in the country's transition from 30 years of war to stability and democracy. Instead, it was just the opposite. As many as 30 percent of Karzai's votes were fraudulent, and lesser fraud was committed on behalf of other candidates. In several provinces, including Kandahar, four to 10 times as many votes were recorded as voters actually cast. The fraud has handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners.

The election was a foreseeable train wreck. Unlike the United Nations-run elections in 2004, this balloting was managed by Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC). Despite its name, the commission is subservient to Karzai, who appointed its seven members. Even so, the international role was extensive. The United States and other Western nations paid the more than $300 million to hold the vote, and UN technical staff took the lead in organizing much of the process, including printing ballot papers, distributing election materials and designing safeguards against fraud...

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Marketing Framework in Support of Non-Lethal Fires
by Lieutenant Colonel Morgan Mann

Marketing Framework in Support of Non-Lethal Fires (Full PDF Article)

The purpose of this paper is to put forth an alternative or augment to conventional military planning processes when incorporating non-lethal fires, effects and targeting. The tactical units of the joint force are now infused with many non-lethal ‘enablers’ and coordinating agencies with which to influence the battlespace. However, this augmentation does not come with the additional planning frameworks that can assist the commander and his staff to integrate and synchronize the additional tools and capabilities. Several planning concepts from corporate America may be able to assist.

In 2004 the Secretary of Defense developed a 6 phase concept for fighting the Long War. Four of the six phases involve primarily non-lethal activities, and 2 of these are likely to require a commitment of U.S. ground forces. Stabilization and the enablement of civil authority, phases 4 and 5 respectively, involve engagement with numerous hostile and non-hostile actors by tactical units. It will be brigades, battalions, and companies of the joint force that will plan and execute much of Phase 4 and 5 operations. They will do this by integrating non-lethal military enablers such as engineers, Civil Affairs, and Psychological Operation Teams. They will also need to coordinate with interagency teams such as Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) and US Agency for International Development (US AID), as well as non-government organizations (NGOs). Battalions will also shape the perceptions of various host nation actors by their own organic operations.

There are numerous techniques and procedures documented for the accurate and timely incorporation of lethal fires. From fire support plans, to execution matrices and targeting board mechanics, the services are masters of integrating lethal fires. However, the planning frameworks for our tactical units to conduct non-lethal fires and targeting are limited. Recently published field manuals such as Stability Operations (FM 3-07), Counterinsurgency Operations (FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5), and the Army’s new Operations (FM 3-0) manual reference non-lethal fires as critical components to planning and executing operations; however, there is little in way of prescriptive help. There are doctrinal publications pertaining to Information Operations (FM 3-13 and JP 3-13) and Non-Lethal targeting but these publications are focused on Division and higher level units where there are dedicated staff’s for non-lethal fires and effects. In addition to the lack of tools at the tactical level we also lack much of the joint or service specific doctrinal language to communicate what ‘non-lethal’ or ‘non-kinetic’ fires and targeting are, and how they are suppose to affect the battlespace. We seem to try to shoehorn non-lethal efforts into lethal fires language.

Marketing Framework in Support of Non-Lethal Fires (Full PDF Article)

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Deadly Attack By Taliban Tests New Strategy - Joshua Partlow and Greg Jaffe, Washington Post. US commanders had been planning since late last year to abandon the small combat outpost in mountainous eastern Afghanistan where eight US soldiers died Saturday in a fierce insurgent assault. The pullout, part of a strategy of withdrawing from sparsely populated areas where the United States lacks the troops to expel Taliban forces and to support the local Afghan government, has been repeatedly delayed by a shortage of cargo helicopters, Afghan politics and military bureaucracy, US military officials said. The attack began in the early morning hours. Taliban-linked militiamen struck from the high ground using rifles, grenades and rockets against the outpost, a cluster of stone buildings set in a small Hindu Kush valley that has been manned by 140 US and Afghan forces. By the end of a day-long siege, eight Americans and two Afghan security officers were dead, marking the highest toll for US forces in over a year. The deaths brought into stark relief the dilemma the Obama administration faces in Afghanistan. Without more soldiers and supplies, the Taliban and allied insurgents are gaining ground, but committing more forces could sink the country deeper into an increasingly deadly and unpopular war.

Attacks on Remote Posts Highlight Afghan Risks - Sabrina Tavernese and Sangar Rahimi, New York Times. Insurgents attacked a pair of remote American military bases in Afghanistan over the weekend in a deadly battle that underscored the vulnerability of the kind of isolated bases that the top American commander there wants to scale back. The commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is pressing for a change in strategy that would shift troops to heavily populated centers to protect civilians and focus less on battling the insurgents in the hinterlands. As though to reinforce his point, insurgents carried out a bold daylight strike on two bases on the Pakistani border, killing eight Americans and four Afghan security officers in the deadliest attack for American soldiers in more than a year, Afghan and American officials said Sunday. The assault occurred less than 20 miles from the site of a similar attack that killed nine Americans last year, which had already become a cautionary tale at the Pentagon for how not to win the war in Afghanistan.

Worst Losses for a Year as Taleban Storm NATO Outpost - Martin Fletcher, The Times. It began before dawn - a devastating, well-planned attack. About 300 insurgents swarmed out of a village and mosque and attacked a pair of isolated American outposts in a remote mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan with machineguns, rockets and grenades. They first stormed the Afghan police post at the foot of the hill in the province of Nuristan, a Taleban and al-Qaeda stronghold on the lawless Pakistan border. They then swept up to the NATO post. The battle lasted all day. American and Afghan soldiers finally repelled them, with the help of US helicopters and warplanes - but at heavy cost. Eight American soldiers and two Afghan policemen were killed, with many injured. It was the worst attack on NATO forces in 14 months, and one of the deadliest battles of the eight-year war. The insurgents seized at least 20 Afghan policemen whose fate last night remained unclear. The attack came at a crucial juncture in the war, with President Obama soon to decide whether to accept a request by General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the 100,000-strong US and NATO force in Afghanistan, for 40,000 extra troops, or to reduce the counter-insurgency operation against the Taleban and focus on al-Qaeda.

Afghanistan Assault Points Out US Vulnerabilities - Laura King, Los Angeles Times. In one of the most lethal battles for American troops in the Afghanistan war, a wave of insurgents attacked a pair of relatively lightly manned bases near the Pakistani border over the weekend, triggering a daylong clash that left eight Americans and as many as half a dozen Afghan troops dead. It was precisely the kind of attack the top US commander in Afghanistan is hoping to stave off by recently ordering troops to withdraw from such small outposts, concentrating instead on defending population centers. The outposts attacked Saturday had already been slated to be abandoned soon, the military said. The toll was the highest in a single incident for American forces in Afghanistan since nine US soldiers died in a strikingly similar insurgent assault 15 months ago on an outpost in the same northeastern province, Nuristan. Military officials describe the attack on the jointly run US-Afghan outposts in the Kamdesh district as a tightly coordinated onslaught by hundreds of insurgents.

McChrystal Planned to Move Soldiers Killed in Afghan Siege - Mark Sappenfield, Christian Science Monitor. One fundamental tenet of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's controversial Afghanistan strategy aims at avoiding precisely the kinds of attacks that killed eight American soldiers Sunday. In what is being described as one of the boldest attacks of the Afghan insurgency, an estimated 300 militants sustained a day-long siege against a coalition outpost in Nuristan Province - a place where the rule of law is so tenuous and the terrain so forbidding that it is seen as one of the likeliest hiding places for Osama bin Laden. It is also has fewer people than Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Beyond the request for more resources that has engrossed America, McChrystal's battlefield assessment proposes deploying American troops in a profoundly different way. Rather than sending them to the farthest-flung corners of a far-flung nation to hunt down scores of militants hiding in remote mountain caves, it intends to protect the Afghan population first, giving the most Afghans the greatest opportunity of establishing something approaching a safe and normal life. Fourth of McChrystal's "four fundamental pillars" for a new strategy is: "prioritize available resources to those critical areas where the population is most threatened." In fact, the very troops in Nuristan forced to fight off unseen attackers firing down from ridge lines cloaked in inclement weather Sunday are poised to be redeployed under McChrystal's new leadership, according to the Washington Post.

American Strategy of Winning Trust of Afghan People is High Risk - Tom Coghlan, The Times news analysis. Attacks such as that which killed eight Americans in Nuristan are a risk inherent in a US strategy that prioritises putting soldiers inside Afghan village communities. The American system, developed over the past three years, aims to separate the population from the insurgents and ultimately to win their trust. That means being among the people, rather than remote from them, and giving up the safety of large bases for small combat outposts of a few dozen troops alongside local security forces. These small outposts are built as satellites to larger forward operating bases which provide artillery support. It was a combat outpost and an Afghan police base close by that were attacked in Nuristan. The outposts are vulnerable if the insurgents can attack with surprise and in large numbers. In the mountains of eastern Afghanistan many of the advantages the Nato forces have in equipment are offset by the local conditions. Nuristan is at high altitude and air cover can be affected at this time of year by the onset of winter. The first snows usually fall at the end of October. The insurgents in the region tend to include highly competent foreign elements with al-Qaeda links as well as Pakistani militants, operating from groups originally trained by the Pakistani Army to fight India in Kashmir, such as Lashkar-e-Toiba. The insurgents operate from safe havens just across the border in Pakistan and enjoy short resupply lines. The steep, wooded valleys mean that they can often get close to US bases without detection, and can routinely overlook American positions from surrounding mountains.

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Gates Wants Leaders' War Advice Kept Private - Ann Scott Tyson and Scott Wilson. Washington Post.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates cautioned military and civilian leaders Monday against publicly airing their advice to President Obama on Afghanistan, just days after the top US general in that country criticized proposals being advocated by some in the White House. "In this process, it is imperative that all of us taking part in these deliberations - civilians and military alike - provide our best advice to the president candidly but privately," Gates said in a speech at the annual meeting of the Association of the US Army. The Army's top general immediately echoed Gates's remarks, which seemed designed to rein in dissent within the ranks.

The remarks by Gates and Gen. George W. Casey Jr. came four days after Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander of US and international troops in Afghanistan, said publicly that a proposal to scale back significantly the US military presence in the country would be "shortsighted." Since then, the administration has sought to tamp down the appearance of any divisions over strategy between McChrystal, Obama's handpicked commander, and the White House. In a blunt assessment disclosed last month, McChrystal warned that the coalition's mission in Afghanistan could fail without a new military strategy and additional troops. Officials are reviewing that assessment and are discussing strategy in a series of meetings at the White House...

More at The Washington Post.

Tensions Rise Over Afghanistan War Strategy - Christi Parsons, Los Angeles Times.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Monday that President Obama's advisors should keep their guidance private, in effect admonishing the top commander in Afghanistan for publicly advocating an approach requiring more troops even as the White House reassesses its strategy. The comment by Gates came a day after Obama's national security advisor, James L. Jones, said that military commanders should convey their advice through the chain of command - a reaction to Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's public statements in support of his troop-intensive strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan.

The exchanges suggested some disarray in the Obama administration's attempts to forge a new policy on Afghanistan and underscored wide differences among top officials over the correct approach. In May, Obama tapped McChrystal, a special forces commander, to take charge of the Afghanistan effort and institute a sweeping counterinsurgency strategy. Obama and McChrystal spoke Friday aboard Air Force One on an airport tarmac in Copenhagen, and White House officials did not detail what the two talked about. Still, Pentagon officials dismissed suggestions Monday that the 55-year-old commander was in any professional jeopardy. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said it would be "absurd" to think McChrystal had lost favor or standing with the administration...

More at The Los Angeles Times.

A General Within Bounds - Michael O'Hanlon, Washington Post opinion.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, has come under fire for making public comments about the war. While answering questions after an Oct. 1 speech - in which he avoided taking sides in the policy debate - McChrystal challenged a popular alternative to the approach that President Obama sent him to Afghanistan to pursue. An op-ed on this page Saturday argued that a battlefield commander should not get ahead of his president in public. Next, national security adviser James L. Jones faulted McChrystal for speaking outside his internal chain of command while the president is reviewing his strategy and basic assumptions about the war. Certainly, if given a do-over, McChrystal might make different, more nuanced statements; he was indeed too blunt and impolitic. But the criticism goes too far.

The Obama/McChrystal plan is classic counterinsurgency and focuses on protecting the Afghan population while strengthening Afghan security forces and government. McChrystal was asked about a "counterterrorism" strategy that would purportedly contain al-Qaeda with much lower numbers of American troops, casualties and other costs. McChrystal did not try to force the president's hand on whether to increase the foreign troop presence in Afghanistan. The general critiqued an option that is at direct odds with Obama's policy and conflicts with the experiences of the US military this decade. That is not fundamentally out of line for a commander...

More at The Washington Post.

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Afghan War Units Begin Two New Efforts - Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall Street Journal.

The Pentagon is establishing two new units devoted to the Afghan war, highlighting the military's focus on the conflict even as the White House considers scaling back the overall US mission there. The units - a so-called Afghan Hands program run out of the Pentagon and a new intelligence center within Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - are designed to help troops deepen their intelligence about the country's complex political and tribal dynamics.

The Defense Department also is expected to announce that Brig. Gen. John M. Nicholson, one of the military's top experts on counterinsurgency, will assume the helm of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell, a Pentagon office established earlier this year to improve the military's performance in Afghanistan. The moves underline the military's efforts to remake itself in response to the Afghan war despite the Obama administration's signals that it is far from committed to the current counterinsurgency approach...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

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Afghanistan and Leadership - Mark Moyar, Wall Street Journal opinioin.

'We're at a point in Afghanistan right now in our overall campaign," the US general says, "where increasingly security can best be delivered by the extension of good governance, justice, economic reconstruction." Afghan security forces "fight side by side with us" more and more frequently, he adds, and American troops are working hard to develop the Afghan security forces. Coalition forces are focusing on securing the population, because "the key terrain is the human terrain." This all sounds like Gen. Stanley McChrystal's proposed strategy for victory. But those words were spoken in May 2006 by Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, then the top US military commander in Afghanistan. Should we be concerned that the McChrystal strategy advocates the same counterinsurgency approach that has failed to achieve success in years past?

Not necessarily. The easy part of any counterinsurgency is formulating the strategy and tactics. The hard part is implementing them. Achieving results requires, first and foremost, skilled and motivated tactical leaders in suf ficient numbers - the absence of which caused the 2006 strategy to fail. With the insurgent environment different in every Afghan valley, command must be decentralized. So finding and implementing the right tactics is primarily the job of battalion commanders and district police chiefs, not presidents or four-star generals...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

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Congratulations are in order for a SWJ friend - The Pritzker Military Library - job well done.

The Pritzker Military Library has been named one of 10 recipients of the 2009 National Medal for Museum and Library Service, the nation’s highest honor for museums and libraries. The annual award, made by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) since 1994, recognizes institutions for outstanding social, educational, environmental, or economic contributions to their communities. The Pritzker Military Library will receive the National Medal at a ceremony to be held in Washington, D.C., including a $10,000 award in recognition of their extraordinary contributions.

“On behalf of our founder and president, James N. Pritzker, we are honored to be selected as a recipient of the 2009 National Medal,” said Ryan Yantis, executive director of the Pritzker Military Library. “While our library is relatively young, we feel this award is a tribute to our members, staff, trustees, and volunteers for their steadfast service and innovative efforts. This recognition will inspire us to achieve even more with our programs, events and outreach.”

“Every day, the Pritzker Military Library makes a real difference in their community,” said IMLS Director Anne-Imelda M. Radice. “Their exemplary programs respond to community challenges, positively impact people’s lives, and serve as models for the nation’s libraries. I applaud their outstanding efforts and encourage others to follow in their footsteps.”

Founded by Colonel (IL) James N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Ret.), the Pritzker Military Library has become a national resource for study of the Citizen Soldier in American history. It is the only library in the United States devoted to military history that is free and open to the public, located not on a military base but in downtown Chicago – a short walk from Navy Pier, Water Tower, and the Magnificent Mile. Stories of courage, valor, and sacrifice are told not only through an extensive collection of books, photographs, posters, and artifacts, but also through weekly programs on topics from military history and current affairs, enjoyed by thousands in person at the Library and around the world via live Internet webcasts.

“The Pritzker Military Library is a national treasure,” said Hershel “Woody” Williams, who earned the Medal of Honor as a young Marine on Iwo Jima in World War II. “What they do with their programs to help tell the story of our American soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen is incredible. I am proud to be associated with such a fine and effective organization.”

Williams, 86, first visited the Library in January 2008 and was interviewed about his experiences in earning the nation’s highest award for valor in combat. He has since donated significant items pertaining to his service to the Library’s rapidly growing collection. Williams lives in Ona, West Virginia, and reflects the growing national and international audience of the Library.

The size of the Library’s collection has quadrupled in just six years. Many of these items are one-of-a-kind or limited edition memoirs, biographies, and personal papers of Citizen Soldiers. These materials are available to members, researchers, and school groups who visit its physical facility, but the Library extends its reach through a commitment to digital collections, with staff assigned to research and digitize historic photos, posters, prints, medals, uniforms, and more. These resources are accessible to scholars, researchers, and genealogist through the Internet.

Since opening in 2003, the Library has produced over 250 programs including lectures by award-winning authors, interviews with Medal of Honor recipients by the Library’s executive producer for programs Ed Tracy, and an Emmy-nominated public affairs program on military issues; questions are taken from viewers attending in person and watching the live Internet webcast. Regular webcast audiences include senior citizen centers, veterans groups, and others around the world. All programs are recorded for later broadcast on WYCC-TV/Channel 20, a PBS affiliate, and also available for download as audio podcasts. The Library also houses a gallery with regular exhibitions of military related art, vintage posters, and photography.

Continue reading "Great Things Happen to Great Organizations and People" »

Two articles in today’s newspapers, sourced by anonymous U.S. administration officials, appear designed to promote an alternative to the beefed-up counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan that General Stanley McChrystal has recommended. These anonymous officials are attempting to make the case that intelligence-driven assassinations of al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan, combined with lawful domestic surveillance techniques, will be enough to effectively protect the U.S. from terror attacks. Promoters of this reasoning likely believe that the acceptance of this approach will undermine the argument for a costly counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan. But the counter-terror/law enforcement approach comes with its own costs and risks, which promoters have an obligation to explain.

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Obama Rules Out Large Reduction in Afghan Force - Peter Baker and Jeff Zeleny, New York Times.

President Obama told Congressional leaders on Tuesday that he would not substantially reduce American forces in Afghanistan or shift the mission to just hunting terrorists there, but he indicated that he remained undecided about the major troop buildup proposed by his commanding general. Meeting with leaders from both parties at the White House, Mr. Obama seemed to be searching for some sort of middle ground, saying he wanted to “dispense with the straw man argument that this is about either doubling down or leaving Afghanistan,” as White House officials later described his remarks.

But as the war approached its eight-year anniversary on Wednesday, the session underscored the perilous crosscurrents awaiting Mr. Obama. While some Democrats said they would support whatever he decided, others challenged him about sending more troops. And Republicans pressed him to order the escalation without delay, leading to a pointed exchange between the president and Senator John McCain of Arizona, his Republican opponent from last year’s election.

Mr. McCain told the president that “time is not on our side.” He added, “This should not be a leisurely process,” according to several people in the room. A few minutes later, Mr. Obama replied, “John, I can assure you this won’t be leisurely,” according to several attendees. “No one feels more urgency to get this right than I do.” ...

More at The New York Times.

Afghan Strategy Divides Lawmakers - Scott Wilson, Washington Post.

Congressional leaders left a rare bipartisan meeting with President Obama on Tuesday divided over what strategy the administration should adopt to fight an increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan and how quickly it must do so to protect US forces already on the ground. Obama called congressional leaders to the White House at a key moment in his Afghanistan policy review, which will determine whether the United States pushes deeper into a war that military officials have warned will probably be won or lost over the next 12 months.

Congress must approve any additional resources that Obama would need if he accepts the recommendations of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, who favors a broad expansion of the effort on the battlefield and the push to build a stable national government. But much of the president's party is resisting calls for more combat troops after eight years of war, forcing him to seek support from Republicans who favor McChrystal's strategy...

More at The Washington Post.

Obama Mulls Middle Ground in Afghanistan War Strategy - Christi Parsons and James Oliphant, Los Angeles Times.

At a White House meeting aimed at tempering increasingly politicized debate over the war in Afghanistan, President Obama told congressional leaders Tuesday that he does not plan to dramatically reduce the American troop level or switch to a strictly counter-terrorism mission. Asking for patience until he completes an assessment of the situation over the next few weeks, the president urged lawmakers to keep their minds open to a nuanced range of options. Obama did not indicate to the bipartisan group whether he is leaning toward or against a significant troop escalation. Instead, he suggested he is looking at the middle range of the spectrum, somewhere between a major increase in forces and a large drawdown. "The president reiterated that we need this debate to be honest and dispense with the straw man argument that this is about either doubling down or leaving Afghanistan," one senior administration official said after the meeting ended.

Still, the 90-minute session demonstrated the growing pressures on the president, who has to contend with many fellow Democrats hesitant to increase American troop levels and Republicans eager to boost the war effort. Several people in attendance said some Republicans openly embraced the recent analysis of Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the US and NATO commander in the Afghanistan effort, who has recommended sending as many as 40,000 additional troops. Republican lawmakers expressed concerns about how long Obama is taking to review the war strategy, saying US troops need more support now and that a delay is putting them at higher risk...

More at The Los Angeles Times.

Behind Afghan War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages - Peter Spiegel and Jonathan Weisman, Wall Street Journal.

The struggle to set the future course of the Afghan war is becoming a battle of two books - both suddenly popular among White House and Pentagon brain trusts. The two draw decidedly different lessons from the Vietnam War. The first book describes a White House in 1965 being marched into an escalating war by a military viewing the conflict too narrowly to see the perils ahead. President Barack Obama recently finished the book, according to administration officials, and Vice President Joe Biden is reading it now. The second describes a different administration, in 1972, when a US military that has finally figured out how to counter the insurgency is rejected by political leaders who bow to popular opinion and end the fight. It has been recommended in multiple lists put out by military officers, including a former US commander in Afghanistan, who passed it out to his subordinates.

The two books - "Lessons in Disaster," on Mr. Obama's nightstand, and "A Better War" on the shelves of military gurus - have become a framework for the debate over what will be one of the most important decisions of Mr. Obama's presidency. On Tuesday, in a White House meeting that went well over its allotted hour, Mr. Obama discussed the war with 31 members of Congress. Republican leaders, and some Democrats, pressed him to quickly accept the judgment of his commanders and send as many as 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. But some Democrats asked if the war was winnable...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Obama and the General - Wall Street Journal editorial.

Democrats have found someone worth fighting in Afghanistan. His name is Stan McChrystal. The other night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went after the commander of US and allied forces in Afghanistan, "with all due respect," for supposedly disrespecting the chain of command. Around the Congressional Democratic Caucus, we're told Members refer to General McChrystal as "General MacArthur," after the commander in Korea sacked by Harry Truman.

White House aides have fanned these flames with recent leaks to the media that "officials are challenging" his assessment asking for more troops. In the last two days, the White House National Security Adviser and the Secretary of Defense have both suggested that the general should keep his mouth shut. President Obama called him in Friday for a talking-to on the tarmac at Copenhagen airport.

Though a decorated Army four-star officer, the General's introduction to Beltway warfare is proving to be brutal. To be fair, Gen. McChrystal couldn't know that his Commander in Chief would go wobbly so soon on his commitment to him as well as to his own Afghan strategy when he was tapped for the job in AprilWe're told by people who know him that Gen. McChrystal "feels terrible" and "had no intention whatsoever of trying to lobby and influence" the Administration. His sense of bewilderment makes perfect sense anywhere but in the political battlefield of Washington. He was, after all, following orders...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

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Afghanistan Journal at Politics Daily.

How the Taliban Might Respond to McChrystal's New War Plan

The Taliban's response to the Afghan war strategy proposed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal could be shocking and grim, with insurgents redoubling suicide attacks and ambushes against American troops, aircraft and road convoys, triumphantly setting up "liberated zones,'' and executing Afghan police and collaborators in areas abandoned by US and allied forces. The first months of the new strategy, rather than feeling like a winning new campaign, could feel a lot like losing.

In the short term, at least, that's the dismaying expectation of a wide range of counterinsurgency and Afghanistan experts if President Obama authorizes McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, to implement a wide-ranging counterinsurgency campaign with as many as 40,000 additional US troops. Pentagon and White House officials say that decision will be made within weeks...

Obama's War: Take Your Time

Out on Afghanistan's dusty battlefields, the war is so complicated that some of America's most hardened, experienced counterinsurgency warriors are stymied and frustrated. Frustrated that they don't have the right tools or enough manpower or, most of all, enough time. Frustrated at the difficulty of grappling with IEDs, corrupt Afghan officials and contractors, and a sullen and skeptical population. Frustrated that their troops don't speak the local language or understand the local culture. Frustrated at trying to manage battles without harming civilians, and struggling to coax signs of life from a flat-lined economy and an inept and sometimes venal government.

One brigade commander, Col. Michael Howard, is on his fourth tour in Afghanistan and understands it like few others. Still, there are pieces of this war that stop him cold. One of them is government corruption. "It's a cancer without a cure in Afghanistan, and if we don't come up with a cure, it will cause us to fail,'' Howard told me last month, biting off his words angrily.

A battalion commander in eastern Afghanistan, also fed up with the war's complexity, confessed: "Sometimes you just want a good, old-fashioned firefight to settle this whole damn thing.'' ...

Afghanistan: How the Kunduz Air Strike Shapes the Debate

The bombs fell about three hours before dawn. Two seven-foot-long steel torpedo shapes sliced silently through the darkness, each packed with 192 pounds of Tritonal high explosive, released and guided by American F-15E strike fighters high over Kunduz province, Afghanistan.

Hours later the news broke, briefly interrupting reports of the latest bickering over health care reform, Michael Jackson's memorial service and unrest in China. Two gasoline tanker trucks, hijacked by the Taliban, had exploded in the attack, killing dozens of insurgents and perhaps civilians. The incident in early September ignited a brief flare-up of questions about air strike policy and civilian casualties, before attention turned back to point scoring on health care and speculating when Gen. Stanley McChrystal's Afghan war assessment would be unveiled. Maybe there's no other way to think about the Afghanistan war except in the most abstract terms. Air strikes or "boots on the ground"? Nation-building, or population-centric security? Counter-insurgency strategy, or counter-terrorism strategy? ...

Much more at David Wood's Afghanistan Journal.

Continue reading "David Wood's Afghanistan Journal" »

The following quote has been getting under my skin since I first read it. Here at the Washington Post. It really has - It stinks to high heaven - and it is disturbing to say the least- at least to me - tell me why I am wrong on this - why an inside the Beltway puke can spit on the boots of an on the ground assessment? Ex has commented on it as others have - so sue me if I too can call this unnamed source an ass of the first order - nay - a too-smart-for-his-or-hers-britches-who-does-not-know-shit-from-shineola-of-the-first-order.

But White House officials are resisting McChrystal's call for urgency, which he underscored Thursday during a speech in London, and questioning important elements of his assessment, which calls for a vast expansion of an increasingly unpopular war. One senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the meeting, said, "A lot of assumptions -- and I don't want to say myths, but a lot of assumptions - were exposed to the light of day."

Hey senior admin official - I'd like to take you outside for a talking to - yea - that's the ticket.

Yes, I know – there you go again Dave – a SWJ guy who does not post much concerning his personal opinions – doing just that. That said, Gen McChrystal and his assembled group provided us ground truth on the situation in Afghanistan and by extension Pakistan. I for one am glad he has been pressing this assessment in the mainstream news media. Ground truth trumps all and the average Joe should be just as informed as the senior admin official.

Continue reading "Slow Burn" »

Civilian, Military Officials at Odds Over Resources Needed for Afghan Mission - Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post.

In early March, after weeks of debate across a conference table in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the participants in President Obama's strategic review of the war in Afghanistan figured that the most contentious part of their discussions was behind them. Everyone, save Vice President Biden's national security adviser, agreed that the United States needed to mount a comprehensive counterinsurgency mission to defeat the Taliban. That conclusion, which was later endorsed by the president and members of his national security team, would become the first in a set of recommendations contained in an administration white paper outlining what Obama called "a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan." Preventing al-Qaeda's return to Afghanistan, the document stated, would require "executing and resourcing an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy."

To senior military commanders, the sentence was unambiguous: US and NATO forces would have to change the way they operated in Afghanistan. Instead of focusing on hunting and killing insurgents, the troops would have to concentrate on protecting the good Afghans from the bad ones. And to carry out such a counterinsurgency effort the way its doctrine prescribes, the military would almost certainly need more boots on the ground...

More at The Washington Post.

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Afghan War Debate Now Leans to Focus on Al Qaeda - Peter Baker and Eric Schmitt, New York Times.

President Obama’s national security team is moving to reframe its war strategy by emphasizing the campaign against Al Qaeda in Pakistan while arguing that the Taliban in Afghanistan do not pose a direct threat to the United States, officials said Wednesday. As Mr. Obama met with advisers for three hours to discuss Pakistan, the White House said he had not decided whether to approve a proposed troop buildup in Afghanistan. But the shift in thinking, outlined by senior administration officials on Wednesday, suggests that the president has been presented with an approach that would not require all of the additional troops that his commanding general in the region has requested.

It remains unclear whether everyone in Mr. Obama’s war cabinet fully accepts this view. While Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has argued for months against increasing troops in Afghanistan because Pakistan was the greater priority, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have both warned that the Taliban remain linked to Al Qaeda and would give their fighters havens again if the Taliban regained control of all or large parts of Afghanistan, making it a mistake to think of them as separate problems. Moreover, Mr. Obama’s commander there, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, has argued that success demands a substantial expansion of the American presence, up to 40,000 more troops. Any decision that provides less will expose the president to criticism, especially from Republicans, that his policy is a prescription for failure...

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Testing Obama's Doctrine - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

Is there an "Obama Doctrine" lurking among the zigs and zags of the president's foreign policy over these first nine months? I think there is, in his repeated invocation of global rights and responsibilities. The problem is that this lawyerly framework hasn't been applied to the really tough issues, such as what to do in Afghanistan. I have been looking for a "doctrine" because, frankly, strategic thinking has been this administration's weak spot. A pragmatic president has surrounded himself with pragmatic advisers - a retired Marine general as national security adviser, a former senator as secretary of state, a career intelligence officer as secretary of defense. None are grand strategists on the model of Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Reviewing Barack Obama's major speeches, I do find one theme that he returns to again and again. To take the version that the president used in his inaugural address: "What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility." This involves a reciprocal exchange - "mutual interest and mutual respect" is how Obama put it that cold day in January, and he has returned often to that formulation. This idea - of balancing rights and responsibilities - strikes me as a central pillar of Obama's foreign policy. Iran has the right to civilian nuclear power but the responsibility to abide by the Non-Proliferation Treaty; Israel has the right to live in peace but the responsibility to refrain from building settlements, which Obama rejects as illegitimate...

More at The Washington Post.

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Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) Blame James Jones for fraying civil-military relations,

2) A Pakistani officer recommends an archipelago for Afghanistan.

Blame James Jones for fraying civil-military relations

A series of articles in the Washington Post this past week has revealed more than just a contentious White House debate over Afghanistan strategy. These reports have also exposed confusion and misunderstandings among top policymakers which have led to fraying relations between civilian and military officials. These misunderstandings, confusion, and fraying relationships are symptoms of inadequate staff work within the White House. And that staff work is the responsibility of James Jones, the national security adviser.

Writing in the Oct. 8 edition of the Washington Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran chronicled the history of the Obama team’s deliberations on Afghan strategy, starting from last winter. According to Chandrasekaran, Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s call for up to 40,000 additional U.S. soldiers inflicted “sticker shock” on some at the White House. This quote from Chandrasekaran’s piece sums up the feeling:

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Perhaps we should strike COIN and CT from the lexicon and talk about real strategy of ends, ways, and means instead of trying to devise strategy based on formulas (e.g., 20-25 troops for every 1000 people) - of course we love the science because it is too hard to explain the art.

--Colonel David Maxwell

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No Substitute for Boots on the Ground - Vincent J. Heintz, Wall Street Journal opinion.

In 2008 I commanded a team of US Army combat advisers in northern Afghanistan's remote Chahar Darreh district. We patrolled with about 50 Afghan police troopers, conducting ambushes, reconnaissance, law-enforcement tasks and reconstruction. These missions had one purpose: to build trust between the police and the people and thereby isolate the insurgents moving among them. Some Afghan troopers were thieves and Taliban infiltrators. Most served with honor and courage. A growing chorus of Americans rejects operations of this kind. Opposition has hardened in response to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's call to launch a fully resourced counterinsurgency effort. Naturally, the peaceniks want us to leave Afghanistan altogether. Other opponents of the McChrystal plan urge President Barack Obama to select a safer, cheaper cleaner method of defeating al Qaeda.

Some conservative isolationists, joined by Vice President Joe Biden, argue that we should rely on commando raids and missile strikes to zap terrorist targets from afar, thereby sparing infantrymen like us the risks that go with living among the Afghans. Tellingly, the Biden camp has yet to offer any details about the sources of real-time intelligence needed to execute precision strikes, or the locations of the bases from which they would be launched. In the years prior to 9/11, our leaders gambled with the nation's safety by employing "surgical" cruise missiles attacks (that blew up only abandoned tents) and organizing specialized counterterrorism forces (that never deployed due to a poverty of intelligence). Nowadays, any talk of returning to this over-the-horizon concept is shockingly naïve...

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The Missing Debate on Afghanistan - Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal opinion.

All in. All out. Double down. Withdraw. The language of the Afghanistan debate is stark, as seem the choices. But at least the debate has begun, forced by the blunt recent comments of Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It is overdue. At the very least, less than a full airing of all the facts, realities, challenges and possibilities in that region shows insufficient respect and gratitude toward those we've put in harm's way. Nobody, really, is certain what to do, or wherein lies wisdom. It isn't a choice between right and wrong or "clearly smart" versus "obviously stupid" so much as a choice between two hells, or more than two.

The hell of withdrawal is what kind of drama would fill the vacuum, who would re-emerge, who would be empowered, what Pakistan would look like with a newly redrawn reality in the neighborhood, what tremors would shake the ground there as the US troops march out. It is the hell of a great nation that had made a commitment in retreat, abandoning not only its investment of blood and treasure but those on the ground, and elsewhere, who had one way or another cast their lot with us. It would involve the hell, too, of a UN commitment, an allied commitment, deflated to the point of collapse.

The hell of staying is equally clear, and vivid: more loss of American and allied troops, more damage to men and resources, an American national debate that would be a continuing wound and possibly a debilitating one, an overstretched military given no relief and in fact stretched thinner, a huge and continuing financial cost in a time when our economy is low. There is no particular guarantee of, or even completely persuasive definition of, success. And Pakistan may blow anyway. The debate is over which hell is less damaging in the long term, which hell is more livable...

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A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq
SWJ Book Review by Matthew Caris

A Question of Command (Full PDF Article)

A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq by Mark Moyar, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2009, 368 pp., $30.

Critics claim American counterinsurgency theory has become dogmatic, too fixated on making major political, economic, or even societal changes in order to combat insurgencies. Ralph Peters, Bing West, and others have written that proponents pay too much attention to the “truisms” that pervade FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, and not enough to killing insurgents. This is how Mark Moyar frames the COIN debate in the first chapter of his book A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq. Dr. Moyar, a professor at the Marine Corps University, argues that both sides in this debate miss the real determinant in success or failure in COIN: leadership. Contending that insurgency is at its core a power struggle between competing elites, Moyar makes the case that the side that marshals better leadership, as defined by ten essential traits of commanders for COIN, will emerge victorious. He argues the particular tactics employed do not necessarily matter, though he tends to favor kinetic methods over the kinds of nonmilitary means often prescribed by COIN theorists. The book examines nine historical cases: the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Philippine Insurrection, the Huk Rebellion, Malaya, Vietnam, El Salvador, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In each, Moyar examines the performance of counterinsurgent leaders, and how their leadership values (or lack thereof) affected the outcome.

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Operational Check-Fire
An Assessment of Our Operational Concept of Operations in Support of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Interagency Policy and Goals
by R.J. Buikema

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The U.S. approach toward Afghanistan and Pakistan has seen marked changes since the transition from the George W. Bush administration to the Barack Obama administration during January of this year. With a new president came a new policy, fresh leadership, and a modified military/ diplomatic approach. Once new leadership was installed, an increase of 21,000 additional military personnel was announced, meaning that currently, 68,000 U.S. forces are present in Afghanistan. Forces have expanded offensive operations and are concentrating on two fronts. The first is the eastern border provinces with Pakistan, a traditional logistics route for Taliban and Haqqani Network forces, which also use the border area for safe havens, training, recruiting, and command & control. The second is southern Afghanistan where the Taliban loyalists of Kandahar and Helmand Province have had a menacing and somewhat dominant presence for years. Even now, some legislators and military commanders are calling for an even greater presence of U.S. forces, as Afghanistan has rapidly shifted from a delaying effort to the pivotal point of strategic policy. Meanwhile, some political pundits are already referring to Afghanistan as “Obama’s Vietnam”, even though some elements of the outlined civil-military objectives are only now being implemented. While the political-military debate is likely to continue for some time, it is prudent to review the core goals for the region and evaluate if the ongoing U.S. operational approach is in fact supporting accomplishment of those goals. What is the strategic vision for Afghanistan and Pakistan? Which tasks and objectives support that strategic vision? Has operational success (or failure) had an impact on those strategic goals?

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In the Afghan War, Aim for the Middle - Richard N. Haass, Washington Post opinion.

Why does Afghanistan matter? We generally hear four arguments. First, if the Taliban returns to power, Afghanistan will again be a haven for terrorist groups. Second, if the Taliban takes over, Afghanistan will again become a human rights nightmare. Third, a perceived defeat of the United States in Afghanistan would be a blow to US prestige everywhere and would embolden radicals. Fourth, an Afghanistan under Taliban control would be used by extremists as a sanctuary from which to destabilize Pakistan.

None of these assumptions is as strong as proponents maintain. Afghanistan certainly matters - the question is how much. Al-Qaeda does not require Afghan real estate to constitute a regional or global threat. Terrorists gravitate to areas of least resistance; if they cannot use Afghanistan, they will use countries such as Yemen or Somalia, as in fact they already are. No doubt, the human rights situation would grow worse under Taliban rule, but helping Afghan girls get an education, no matter how laudable, is not a goal that justifies an enormous US military commitment. And yes, the taking of Kabul by the Taliban would become part of the radicals' narrative, but the United States fared well in Asia after the fall of South Vietnam, and less than a decade after an ignominious withdrawal from Beirut, the United States amassed the international coalition that ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. There are and always will be opportunities to demonstrate the effectiveness of US power. The one issue...

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Obama Wanted a Petraeus. Buyer Beware. - Greg Jaffe, Washington Post opinion.

It is hard not to look at Stanley McChrystal without seeing David Petraeus. Both generals are fitness freaks, capable of running soldiers half their age into the ground. Within hours of taking command of faltering wars, both were vowing to remake their forces. "We must change the way we think, act and operate," McChrystal wrote in September instructions to his troops in Afghanistan. He was practically channeling Petraeus, circa 2007, who challenged his troops in Iraq to adopt a new "warrior-builder-diplomat" mind-set.

These similarities were a big selling point for the Obama administration, which this summer decided it wanted its own Petraeus - a creative wartime commander and gifted manager who could push the military in Afghanistan into unfamiliar realms, such as economic development and tribal politics. But the past week showed that a Petraeus redux comes with some heavy baggage - for McChrystal as well as the White House. As the administration debated its strategy in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and national security adviser James Jones publicly upbraided McChrystal, who is seeking a major increase in forces, for stating in a speech in London that a shift to a smaller US presence and a narrower focus on killing al-Qaeda terrorists would be "shortsighted." ...

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Two Wrongs Make Another Fiasco - Frank Rich, New York Times opinion.

Those of us who love F. Scott Fitzgerald must acknowledge that he did get one big thing wrong. There are second acts in American lives. (Just ask Marion Barry, or William Shatner.) The real question is whether everyone deserves a second act. Perhaps the most surreal aspect of our great Afghanistan debate is the Beltway credence given to the ravings of the unrepentant blunderers who dug us into this hole in the first place. Let’s be clear: Those who demanded that America divert its troops and treasure from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2002 and 2003 - when there was no Qaeda presence in Iraq - bear responsibility for the chaos in Afghanistan that ensued. Now they have the nerve to imperiously and tardily demand that America increase its 68,000-strong presence in Afghanistan to clean up their mess - even though the number of Qaeda insurgents there has dwindled to fewer than 100, according to the president’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones.

But why let facts get in the way? Just as these hawks insisted that Iraq was “the central front in the war on terror” when the central front was Afghanistan, so they insist that Afghanistan is the central front now that it has migrated to Pakistan. When the day comes for them to anoint Pakistan as the central front, it will be proof positive that Al Qaeda has consolidated its hold on Somalia and Yemen...

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All is Not Yet Lost - Dr. Nasim Ashraf, Washington Times opinion.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's report told us what we were afraid to hear. We are going to lose the war in Afghanistan! President Obama's Afghanistan-Pakistan policy, launched just in March, whose main goal was to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda, doesn't seem to be going well. Growing insurgency and a totally ineffective and discredited government in Afghanistan pose lethal threats that can result in America's total defeat unless something is done immediately.

I agree with Gen. McChrystal that more troops may be needed presently. However, before additional troops are sent to Afghanistan, there must be a clear operational strategy as well as a political surge. Military victory is not possible, and the path of extended military engagement is a recipe for disaster. But simply abandoning the region is also not an option. This would be the same mistake the United States made in 1989 after helping to expel the Soviet army from Afghanistan. The sooner Afghanistan is stabilized politically, the earlier the United States can disengage militarily. How does America do that? ...

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Obama's Afghan Meetings a Public Spectacle - Jon Ward and Matthew Mosk, Washington Times.

President Obama's weeks-long review of US strategy in Afghanistan has turned the normally secretive process of deciding how many troops to deploy to a war zone and how best to use them into an oddly public affair that has been pored over day after day by television analysts, scrutinized by his critics and sized up by the nation's allies and enemies. As Mr. Obama presided over the fourth meeting of his war council in two weeks at the White House on Friday, even the enemy was trying to influence the outcome. While the White House sizes up whether the Taliban is a threat to the United States or whether it would re-create a safe haven in Afghanistan for al Qaeda, the group placed a statement on Web sites this week saying it does "not have any agenda to harm other countries."

"That was a political message to President Obama in an attempt to change the terms of the debate," said Peter Mansoor, a professor of military history at Ohio State University who served as a top adviser to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command. "You can see all sides ratcheting up the pressure on the president - more pressure than would perhaps otherwise be there if this process was going on behind closed doors," Mr. Mansoor said...

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Counterintuitive Counterinsurgency - Richard Fontaine and John Nagl, Los Angeles Times opinion.

As the Obama administration debates whether to stick with the counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan, opponents point to that nation's flawed presidential election as a reason why this approach cannot work. Counterinsurgency is premised, they argue, on the presence of a legitimate national government that can win allegiance from local populations. Given credible allegations of rampant abuse in Afghanistan's August election, President Hamid Karzai's newly illegitimate government cannot play this role. As a result, the United States has little choice but to change strategies.

This argument is badly flawed. Electoral fraud will render our task in Afghanistan more difficult, but it does not make counterinsurgency impossible. On the contrary, a counterinsurgency approach - and not a narrowly tailored mission focused solely on killing or capturing enemies - remains the best path to success in Afghanistan. To understand why, consider the analogous case of Iraq over the last three years. In January 2007, the "surge" of combat forces began as part of a new counterinsurgency strategy that emphasized clearing areas of fighters, holding that territory and building the infrastructure and institutions that had been so badly lacking - just as Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has proposed for Afghanistan...

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Civilian Goals Largely Unmet in Afghanistan - Elisabeth Bumiller and Mark Landler, New York Times.

Even as President Obama leads an intense debate over whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, administration officials say the United States is falling far short of his goals to fight the country’s endemic corruption, create a functioning government and legal system and train a police force currently riddled with incompetence.

Interviews with senior administration and military officials and recent reports assessing Afghanistan’s progress show that nearly seven months after Mr. Obama announced a stepped-up civilian effort to bolster his deployment of 17,000 additional American troops, many civil institutions are deteriorating as much as the country’s security. Afghanistan is now so dangerous, administration officials said, that many aid workers cannot travel outside the capital, Kabul, to advise farmers on crops, a key part of Mr. Obama’s announcement in March that he was deploying hundreds of additional civilians to work in the country. The judiciary is so weak that Afghans increasingly turn to a shadow Taliban court system because, a senior military official said, “a lot of the rural people see the Taliban justice as at least something.” ...

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What Failure in Afghanistan? - Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post opinion.

At the heart of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for a major surge in troops is the assumption that we are failing in Afghanistan. But are we really? The United States has had one central objective: to deny al-Qaeda the means to reconstitute, to train and to plan major terrorist attacks. This mission has been largely successful for the past eight years. Al-Qaeda is dispersed, on the run and unable to direct attacks of the kind it planned and executed routinely in the 1990s. Fourteen of the top 20 leaders of the group have been killed by drone attacks. Its funding sources are drying up, and its political appeal is at an all-time low. All this is not an accident but rather a product of the US presence in the region and efforts to disrupt terrorists, track funds, gain intelligence, aid development, help allies and kill enemies.

It's true that the security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated considerably. While it is nothing like Iraq in 2006 - civilian deaths are a tenth as numerous - parts of the country are effectively controlled by the Taliban. Other parts are no man's land. But these areas are sparsely populated tracts of countryside. All the major population centers remain in the hands of the Kabul government. Is it worth the effort to gain control of all 35,000 Afghan villages scattered throughout the country? That goal has eluded most Afghan governments for the past 200 years and is a very high bar to set for the US mission there...

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The Real Afghan Lessons From Vietnam - Lewis Sorley, Wall Street Journal opinion.

More than 30 years have passed since North Vietnam, in gross violation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, conquered South Vietnam. That outcome was partly the result of greatly increased logistical support to the North from its communist backers. It was also the result of America's failure to keep its commitments to the South. Those commitments included promises to maintain a robust level of financial support, to replace combat materiel, and even the use of air power to support the South in case of aggression by the North. That failure was the doing of a US Congress that had tired of the country's long involvement in a war in Southeast Asia and cared nothing for the sacrifices of its own armed forces or those of the South Vietnamese people.

Since then, whenever America has entered into other military actions abroad or contemplated such commitments, the specter of Vietnam has been raised. It is entirely appropriate that earlier military experiences be examined for such "lessons learned" as they may yield. But it is equally essential that those prior campaigns be accurately understood before any valid comparisons are made. When it comes to the Vietnam War, much skewed or inaccurate commentary has impeded our understanding of that conflict and its outcome. All the better-known early works on the Vietnam War - by Stanley Karnow, Neil Sheehan, George Herring - concentrated disproportionately on the early period of American involvement when Gen. William C. Westmoreland commanded US forces. As a consequence, many came to view the entirety of the war as more or less a homogeneous whole, and to apply to the whole endeavor valid criticisms of the early years, ignoring what happened after Gen. Creighton Abrams took command soon after the 1968 Tet Offensive...

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As the debate on COIN and CT “strategies” continues I think it is instructive to go back and look at the President’s 27 March 2009 remarks on Afghanistan and Pakistan Strategy (pasted below). This certainly must serve as the unclassified strategic guidance for the campaign plans for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Note that in his remarks he does not use the terms Counterinsurgency or Counterterrorism even once. On the other hand he uses the term “insurgency” twice, “terror” twice and “terrorist/terrorists” 10 times.

I wonder how many people have really studied this document and understand what is being said? (I am sure GEN McChrystal has, as has his staff, the CENTCOM staff, the SOCOM staff, and the Joint Staff and the military planners involved in developing the campaign plan – it is doubtful that many of the pundits on either side of the COIN versus CT debate have really read this document).

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Views on Afghanistan Buildup Bring Clinton and Gates Together in an Alliance - Mark Landler and Thom Shanker, New York Times.

The last time the Obama administration arrived at a moment of truth in the debate over what to do about Afghanistan, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Robert M. Gates delivered a one-two punch in favor of a more ambitious approach. Now, as President Obama leads yet another debate on whether to deploy tens of thousands of additional troops there, the secretary of state and the secretary of defense will once again constitute a critical voting bloc, the likely leaders of an argument for a middle ground between a huge influx of soldiers and a narrow focus aimed at killing terrorists from Al Qaeda, according to several administration officials.

That swing vote would put them at odds with the bare-bones approach still being pushed by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., as well as the most aggressive military buildup recommended by the American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. All of them have chosen to play their cards close to the vest, even holding back in the marathon meetings of recent weeks of the National Security Council, according to officials who attended the sessions...

More at The New York Times.

Support Troops Swelling US Force in Afghanistan - Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post.

President Obama announced in March that he would be sending 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. But in an unannounced move, the White House has also authorized - and the Pentagon is deploying - at least 13,000 troops beyond that number, according to defense officials. The additional troops are primarily support forces, including engineers, medical personnel, intelligence experts and military police. Their deployment has received little mention by officials at the Pentagon and the White House, who have spoken more publicly about the combat troops who have been sent to Afghanistan. The deployment of the support troops to Afghanistan brings the total increase approved by Obama to 34,000.

The buildup has raised the number of US troops deployed to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan above the peak during the Iraq "surge" that President George W. Bush ordered, officials said. The deployment does not change the maximum number of service members expected to soon be in Afghanistan: 68,000, more than double the number there when Bush left office. Still, it suggests that a significant number of support troops, in addition to combat forces, would be needed to meet commanders' demands. It also underscores the growing strain on US ground troops, raising practical questions about how the Army and Marine Corps would meet a request from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan...

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Confusion in Afghanistan - Ehsan Ahrari, Khaleej Times opinion.

As President Barack H. Obama is edging toward making up his mind about accepting, partially accepting, or not accepting General Stanley McChrystal’s advice to insert more troops in Afghanistan, I hear an abundance of metaphors flying. One metaphor used by Obama during the presidential campaign, when he described starting the war in Iraq to driving a bus into ditch. That metaphor is being reprinted (recently by the New York Times). Rory Stewart, a Professor at Harvard and an opponent of the option of increasing the troops is using the metaphor “driving off a cliff”. Steven Biddle, a Fellow at CFR, calls it “a war that is worth waging, 
but only barely.” John Nagle, who built his reputation by being one of General David Petraeus’ assistants, and a person whose doctoral dissertation was on counter-insurgency (and a very good read), calls the war in Afghanistan “a better war.”

The debate within the Principals Committee in the White House is reported to be waging along the lines of COIN or counter-terrorism. What is missing from all these metaphors and depictions is what should be our strategy 
in Afghanistan. If the United States is committed to remain in Afghanistan for the next 20 years, we need to add more troops. Even as we do that, our focus ought to be nation building, not in the sense of how this phrase is used among the US Special Forces. What I mean by nation building is a massive process of institution building for the purpose of establishing democracy in Afghanistan, along with a huge campaign against counter-drug operations, crop substitution, educational reforms, a colossal campaign of building civilian infrastructures, etc...

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Last week the Washington Post revealed that a group of Indian nuclear scientists is concerned that India’s nuclear deterrent lacks credibility. Why? They claim that India’s 1998 test of a two-stage thermonuclear device was a dud. Thus, they say, India had better fix its thermonuclear bomb designs and verify them with a test, before the government agrees to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

Some excerpts from the article:

One of the scientists, K. Santhanam, who coordinated India's nuclear weapons program when the country conducted five nuclear tests 11 years ago, has said that the original thermonuclear device test was a dud … Santhanam said that the hydrogen bomb tested in 1998 "completely failed to ignite" and that the shaft, the frame and the winches were found to be intact even after the tests. No crater was formed in the fusion test.

"If the second H-bomb stage of the composite device had worked, the shaft would have been blown to smithereens," he told reporters.

[…]

Last week, the former chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission, P.K. Iyengar, also joined the chorus advocating more tests and said "nobody makes a weapon out of a single test."

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The Marine Corps University symposium, "Counterinsurgency Leadership in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond" held on September 23, 2009 at the National Press Club, Washington, DC explored ways to improve counterinsurgency leadership, with particular attention to the leaders of American, Afghan, and Iraqi forces. This link to the COIN Leadership symposium webpage contains transcripts and photos from the event. Audio and video highlights will be added.

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Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency is now online at DTIC.

"This publication provides joint doctrine for the planning, execution, and assessment of counterinsurgency (COIN) operations across the range of military operations. This will include the description of relationships between COIN, irregular warfare, counterterrorism, and foreign internal defense."

Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency.

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Complete submission information is now posted for Small Wars Journal Writing Competition.

Please see this page for the complete submission instructions for entries to our $8000 writing contest. And please help us spread the word by aggressively disseminating this flyer throughout the diverse community of small wars participants.

Of note: entries are now due November 30, 2009, not November 10 as originally announced.

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Obama Weighs Afghan Strategy, Not Just Troop Buildup - Jon Ward, Washington Times.

Intense debate has raged for weeks on whether President Obama should send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, but the dispute over numbers may be distracting attention from the more important decision he is facing: the need for a new strategy. "Additional forces are required, but focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely," Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, wrote in his now famous report to the president that was leaked to the press in September. Among the key decisions the president will make is whether to partner with an Afghan government hobbled by accusations of widespread fraud in a recent election, how to handle the prickly diplomatic situation in neighboring Pakistan, and how much effort to put into training the Afghan army.

But perhaps the most pivotal decision, however, is whether the Taliban is a force that must be completely defeated, or whether it can be bargained with. Peter Mansoor, a professor of military history at Ohio State University who served as a top adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus in Iraq, said President Obama's military reviews "are addressing all three facets of strategy: ends, ways, and means." "The media, and by extension the American people, are focused on means, (troop numbers)," Mr. Mansoor said in an e-mail. "But as or more important than this factor are the administration's goals (ends) in Afghanistan and its concept for prosecution of the war (ways). You need to look at all three in unison to get a clear picture of the way ahead." ...

More at The Washington Times.

Obama Focuses on Civilian Effort in Afghanistan Strategy Review - Anne E. Kornblut and Scott Wilson, Washington Post.

President Obama, convening his fifth war council meeting in as many weeks, pressed his senior national security advisers Wednesday on the political situation in Afghanistan and the effort to train the country's security forces, officials said. Allegations of fraud in the Afghan presidential election over the summer have raised questions about the legitimacy of Hamid Karzai's government, complicating US efforts to partner with him. Meanwhile, the country's security forces are seen as ill-equipped to confront an insurgency that is gaining strength.

Such factors are figuring prominently in the debate over the Obama administration's strategy in Afghanistan, official say. Although the discussions also include making a decision on whether to deploy tens of thousands of additional US troops, an administration official said the president was "very focused on the complexity of the situation" Wednesday - looking past the military aspect of the equation and toward the civilian effort. Another official said the focus on the civilian effort grew out of a sense that the United States needs to better cultivate Afghan leaders and institutions. "We've been at war eight years, and we realize now we're starting from scratch because very little work has been done building a credible Afghan partner," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the talks...

More at The Washington Post.

US Officials Look at Scenarios for Afghanistan 'Middle Path' - Julian E. Barnes and Christi Parsons, Los Angeles Times.

As the Obama administration debates whether to shift its aims in Afghanistan, officials at the Pentagon and National Security Council have begun developing "middle path" strategies that would require fewer troops than their ground commander is seeking. Measures under consideration include closer cooperation with local tribal chiefs and regional warlords, using CIA agents as intermediaries and cash payments as incentives, said current and former officials who described the strategies on condition of anonymity.

Other steps would concentrate US and allied troops in cities, pulling out of Afghanistan's widely dispersed rural areas. At the same time, the allied forces would push ahead with plans to intensify training of Afghan troops, officials said. None of the strategies envision troop reductions, but officials said they would not require the 40,000-troop increase preferred by Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the US and allied commander. A number of White House officials favor sending fewer than 20,000 additional troops...

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Careful to a Fault on Afghanistan - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

Afghanistan could be the most important decision of Barack Obama's presidency. Maybe that's why he is, in effect, making it twice. What's odd about the administration's review of Afghanistan policy is that it is revisiting issues that were analyzed in great detail - and seemingly resolved - in the president's March 27 announcement of a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The recent recommendations from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal were intended to implement that "Af-Pak" strategy - not send the debate back to first principles.

The March document stated that the basic goal was "to prevent Afghanistan from becoming the al-Qaeda safe haven that it was before 9/11." But to accomplish this limited mission, the president endorsed a much broader effort to "reverse the Taliban's gains, and promote a more capable and accountable Afghan government." That gap between end and means has bedeviled the policy ever since. So now the president is doing it again, slowly and carefully - as in last Friday's three-hour White House meeting, where, I'm told, he went around the table and quizzed his national security aides one by one...

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An Interview with Peter Godwin
by John Noonan

Full article: An Interview with Peter Godwin

Sometimes the most effective COIN lessons are found in the strangest of places. Some time ago, while researching Zimbabwe’s staggering collapse under the Robert Mugabe regime, I stumbled upon When a Crocodile Eats the Sun – a deeply moving memoir of Zimbabwe’s corrosive rot, told by native Zimbabwean reporter, Mr. Peter Godwin. Godwin spun his tale with an enviably smooth narration, blending microcosmic personal tragedies with macrocosmic political and economic failures into a sad, powerful account of a functional nation-state’s collapse. When I finished reading, I wanted more. Digging into Godwin’s Amazon.com author history, I came across Mukiwa, the fascinating autobiography of a white boy growing up in colonial Africa (and winner of the Orwell Prize for political writing).

Mukiwa spans multiple governments in a single country, as Godwin’s wonderfully interesting experiences stretch from Rhodesia as a British Crown Colony, to an international pariah, to an undeclared Republic, an unrecognized hybrid state in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, and finally to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. While Mukiwa isn’t necessarily a war memoir (though Godwin did spend much of his career as a war correspondent), several chapters are dedicated to his time serving with the British South Africa Police during the Rhodesian Bush War. So poignant were the stories from Godwin’s tour, I sent a copy to a close friend serving in Afghanistan. He too was taken with how simply and effectively Godwin laid out basic COIN principles, so much so that he had his NCOs read the chapters that I had bookmarked.

I reached out to Mr. Godwin, now a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, who generously agreed to sit down for an interview.

Full article: An Interview with Peter Godwin

John Noonan is a national security and defense writer with The Weekly Standard and Military.com. Both Mukiwa and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun are available for purchase at Amazon.com.

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China’s Preoccupation with Asymmetric War:
Lessons Learned from the Hezbollah-Israeli War
by Ehsan Ahrari

Download the full article: China’s Preoccupation with Asymmetric War

Chinese leaders have decided long ago that, in the wake of a conflict, their military cannot fight and win a battle against the U.S. military on a force-on-force basis. However, that reality was not going to discourage a country whose strategic culture has produced original thinkers of the caliber and reputation of Sun Tzu and Mao Zedong.

In answering this question, one has to remind onself of a few famous quotes of Sun Tzu: “All warfare is based on deception.” “If your enemy … is in superior strength, evade him…” and “Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.” One must also recall Unrestricted War, published in 1999, by two senior Chinese colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. It stated that, when faced with a technologically superior enemy, it is “necessary to dare to completely upset the order of the cards in one's hands and reorganize them in accordance with the needs of war and the interests of a nation.”

The conventional wisdom regarding China’s asymmetric war doctrine is that it is “aimed at finding key vulnerabilities in American forces.” In the post-9/11 era, that doctrine is focused not only on military-related susceptibilities, but also on other weak points. In this context, one has to keep in mind Chang Mengxiong’s concept of “assassin’s mace” (“shashou jian”). Using the analogy of acupuncture for fighting asymmetric wars, this concept argues that even a superpower like the United States has a great number of points of vulnerabilities. If the focus of asymmetric attack is on those points, then the military giant can be brought down by a “weak” power like China.

Download the full article: China’s Preoccupation with Asymmetric War

Ehsan Ahrari is Professor of Security Studies at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS) in Honolulu, Hawaii. This essay was originally prepared as part of his testimony at the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission in March 2007.

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Draft Army Capstone Concept Hits Web for Public Input

By Carroll Kim (TRADOC Public Affairs)

FORT MONROE (Oct. 14, 2009) - The 2009 Army Capstone Concept will be released on Dec. 21, but until then, Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center's Concepts Development and Experimentation Directorate, invites the public to preview and provide feedback for the draft copy on the Small Wars Journal blog.

Last updated in 2005, the ACC describes the broad capabilities the Army will require to apply finite resources to overcome adaptive adversaries in an era of complexity and uncertainty. The concept puts into operational terms Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey's vision of balancing the Army to win today's wars while describing how the future Army will fight.

McMaster furnished the draft to the Small Wars Journal to generate awareness and encourage dialogue through its discussion board. This is the first time TRADOC has "crowdsourced" a document, and more than 100 comments were posted in response to the draft ACC.

Along with this non-traditional method, McMaster has also sought input from Army fellows, joint and international partners, educators and experts in the field, not just from leaders within TRADOC.

While the ACC will enter final planning stages on Oct. 21, the discussion board will remain open for new comments. Please go to the Small Wars Journal to join the conversation. You can also read the document here.

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Business as Usual?
The Role of Department of Defense in Foreign Economic Development
by Thomas J. Lapato

Download the Summary Article (24pp double spaced) or the Complete Article (96+ pp).

Tom Lapato's paper was the blue ribbon paper from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces Class of 2009 and is republished here with his kind permission. It offers motivation for students on athletic scholarships everywhere and provides insights into operationalizing the E in DIME, an essential element of engagement and national power.

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The battles of the 21st century will be fought in global markets and in corporate boardrooms as much as in more traditional combat venues. The Cold War ended with a whimper as the Soviet Union went bankrupt competing with American defense spending while ignoring the economic needs of its people. Terrorist organizations seek out failing states to establish their headquarters and networks using the economic disadvantages of the populations to recruit enemies against American ideals. It is no surprise that the main target of al-Qaeda’s attacks on America was the financial center of the world. Even our most powerful near-peer rival, China, has softened its military stance while intending to subvert US power through economic means. Russia also appears willing to flex its economic muscle through its outflows of energy to achieve greater advantage over its European neighbors and US allies. The current global economic crisis threatens stability and security throughout the world. The Department of Defense (DOD) must develop a class of economic warriors that will be able to lead the country in these non-conventional battles.

It is an optimal time to address the DOD’s role in foreign economic development. Secretary Robert Gates has been vocal about the need for the defense establishment to continue to transform to avoid mistakes from the recent past. Instead of funding expensive, technology driven programs that take years to develop and are aimed at a direct involvement against another industrialized state, Gates has repeatedly called for “employing indirect approaches” where building the capacities of allies, partners, and of fragile states will be just as important as the kinetic approaches generally favored by the US military:

The requirement for the US military to maintain security, provide aid and comfort, begin reconstruction, and prop up local governments and public services will not go away […] to achieve victory as Clausewitz defined it – to attain a political objective – the United States needs a military whose ability to kick down the door is matched by its ability to clean up the mess and even rebuild the house afterward.

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Tom Lapato was an Industry Fellow from KPMG LLP at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF), National Defense University (NDU) during the 2009 academic year. His paper, “Business as Usual? The Role of the Department of Defense in Foreign Economic Development” was a product of his Business Transformation Agency (BTA)-sponsored Research Fellowship through the ICAF writing program. Mr. Lapato’s paper earned the NDU President’s Strategic Vision Award for the class of 2009. Mr. Lapato was guided throughout the research and writing process by his ICAF Research Advisor, Mr. Tom Hauser, along with his sponsor at the BTA, Mr. Bob Love.

Download the Summary Article (24pp double spaced) or the Complete Article (96+ pp).

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Stanley McChrystal’s Long War - Dexter Filkens, New York Times Magazine.

... Success takes time, but how much time does Stanley McChrystal have? The war in Afghanistan is now in its ninth year. The Taliban, measured by the number of their attacks, are stronger than at any time since the Americans toppled their government at the end of 2001. American soldiers and Marines are dying at a faster rate than ever before. Polls in the United States show that opposition to the war is growing steadily.

Worse yet, for all of America’s time in Afghanistan - for all the money and all the blood - the lack of accomplishment is manifest wherever you go. In Garmsir, there is nothing remotely resembling a modern state that could take over if America and its NATO allies left. Tour the country with a general, and you will see very quickly how vast and forbidding this country is and how paltry the effort has been.

And finally, there is the government in Kabul. President Hamid Karzai, once the darling of the West, rose to the top of nationwide elections in August on what appears to be a tide of fraud. The Americans and their NATO allies are confronting the possibility that the government they are supporting, building and defending is a rotten shell...

More at The New York Times Magazine.

McChrystal’s Afghanistan - Jules Crittenden, Forward Movement

... Critics might say that Filkins, whose reporting notes the military view that Afghanistan and Pakistan are intricately entwined and cannot be separated strategically or tactically, doesn’t give the so-called Biden plan a full airing. However, it is a McChrystal profile, not a Biden one. Though that might be entertaining. Embedded in the District of Columbia.

Anyway, you’ll want to read the whole thing. You’ll come away with the sense of a man who, given the time and resources, might just pull off what he set out to do. Not the blindered military bumbler so popular in modern myth, the image that drives this country’s relentless push for political failure in war.* I knew there was a reason why Filkins is my favorite NYT reporter, and not just because his book, The Forever War, is the standout war memoir of our time...

More at Forward Movement.

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A National Security Act of 2009?
A Short Recommendation for a Possible Revision of the National Security Act of 1947
by Colonel David S. Maxwell

Download the full article: A National Security Act of 2009?

“The Interagency is broken” is a refrain heard daily inside the beltway and in conflict areas around the world. It is also quite popular to make the call for a Goldwater-Nichols type legislation to do for the Interagency what that legislation did for the US Military and Joint operations, assignments, and professional military education. Assuming that the Interagency needs to be repaired, the issue is how to reform the organizations, processes, and education and training in the Interagency so that the United States can achieve a “whole of government” approach to National Security challenges of the future and prevent situations such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Download the full article: A National Security Act of 2009?

Colonel David S. Maxwell, U.S. Army, is a Special Forces officer with command and staff assignments in Korea, Japan, Germany, the Philippines, and CONUS, and is a graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth and the National War College, National Defense University. The opinions he expresses in this paper are his own and represent no U.S. Government or Department of Defense positions.

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Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) Learning to share the oceans with China

2) Pakistan under siege

Learning to share the oceans with China

On Sept. 22, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) released a new report, titled, China’s Arrival: A Strategic Framework for a Global Relationship. Journalist and CNAS senior fellow Robert Kaplan, wrote a chapter in the report, called “China’s Two-Ocean Strategy” (see page 45).

Kaplan asserts that “China is in the midst of a shipbuilding and acquisition craze that will result in the People’s Liberation Army Navy having more ships than the U.S. Navy sometime in the next decade.” Since 1945 U.S. diplomatic and political strategies in Asia have been predicated on U.S. naval domination in the western Pacific and Indian oceans. The U.S. Navy’s control of sea-going lines of commerce from the Middle East to all points in Asia has been a major component of America’s alliance system in the region and its relations with potential adversaries. Kaplan’s essay reminds us that over the next decade or so, the rise of China’s naval power will scrap the assumptions underlying America’s Asian diplomacy.

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Speculative Fiction and National Security
by Adam Elkus and Captain Crispin Burke

Download the full article: Speculative Fiction and National Security

The counterinsurgency (COIN) canon—read by NATO’s top officials—includes writing from illustrious military minds such as David Galula, T.E. Lawrence, and David Kilcullen. But according to Andrew Exum, a former Army Ranger who operates the military blog “Abu Muqawama,” it might also have room for George Lucas as well. Exum recently ignited a rambunctious discussion in the political blogosphere by posting an email from his cousin, a Marine Corps officer in Afghanistan, concerning a rather unorthodox topic in defense affairs: the strategy of Star Wars. Exum’s cousin asked a simple question: why did the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars fight as a conventional force, rather than an insurgency?

While the Star Wars-themed post provides an example of Exum’s often freewheeling and snarky style, he and his curious cousin are by no means alone in the defense community. There are many closet sci-fi fans in the military and especially within the civilian policy wonk world. Moreover, science fiction writers use the creative process to imagine future warfare, and military theorists’ predictions of future warfare often resemble science fiction.

History will always be the most useful source of quality defense analysis. The chief danger of deep futurism, fictional or not, is that it often neglects history and extrapolates present conditions to the future. At worst, speculation can tie us to one powerful (and often times erroneous) image of the future. However, speculative fiction paired with the study of history and present experience can enable creative rethinking of present conditions in an allegorical context, getting around self-imposed conceptual barriers.

Download the full article: Speculative Fiction and National Security

Adam Elkus is an analyst specializing in foreign policy and security. He is currently Associate Editor at Red Team Journal. He blogs at Rethinking Security and The Huffington Post. He is currently contributing to the Center for Threat Awareness’ ThreatsWatch project.

Captain Crispin Burke is a UH-60 helicopter pilot with assignments in the 82nd Airborne Division during Hurricane Katrina, Joint Task Force-Bravo in Honduras, and most recently, the 10th Mountain Division in Iraq. He writes for Small Wars Journal and under the name “Starbuck” at his blog, Wings Over Iraq.

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The Italian Job - The Times editorial.

Silvio Berlusconi’s Government must explain payments made to insurgents in Afghanistan. There is a case for local deals, but none for unilateralism. War, said Clausewitz, is the continuation of politics by other means. The Times reported this week on a distinctive political strategy adopted by Italy in the war in Afghanistan. Italian intelligence officers have paid money, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars, to the Taleban in protection money.

Under the arrangement, neither side would attack the other. When the Italians were replaced by French troops in the Sarobi district of Afghanistan last year, the newcomers believed the region to carry only a low risk, as there had been only one Italian fatality in the previous year. But the Italians neglected to mention the payments. Within a month of their arrival, ten French soldiers were killed and 21 were wounded in a Taleban attack.

The Italian Government has furiously denied our report, including our statement that the US Ambassador submitted a formal complaint about Italian payments to local insurgents in Herat province. Opposition politicians in France are demanding explanations, and ought to receive them. We unreservedly stand by our account. Since its publication, a Taleban commander and two senior Afghan officials have confirmed that this strategy has been practised by Italian forces in this and other regions of Afghanistan...

More at The Times.

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Don't Settle for Stalemate in Afghanistan - Ike Skelton and Joe Lieberman, Washington Post opinion.

Six months ago the Obama administration concluded that the only way to stop Afghanistan's slide into insecurity and prevent the reemergence of a terrorist haven was to put in place an integrated counterinsurgency strategy focused on protecting the Afghan population, building up the Afghan national security forces and improving Afghan governance. We strongly supported the president's decision and continue to believe that he was right. He also made the right decision last week when, in a meeting with congressional leaders, he ruled out withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan.

The key question confronting the administration now is not whether to pursue counterinsurgency in Afghanistan but whether to provide that counterinsurgency effort with the resources it needs. We believe that providing those resources will be critical. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's assessment states that his new strategy requires additional resources and the proper execution of an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency campaign. To this end, he has reportedly forwarded to the president a range of resource options, each with differing levels of risk to the mission. We hope that President Obama will carefully weigh these recommendations and provide his commander with the necessary forces and civilian resources he needs to properly execute a counterinsurgency campaign...

More at The Washington Post.

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Risking a Rights Disaster - Wazhma Frogh, Washington Post opinion.

As an Afghan woman who for many years lived a life deprived of the most basic human rights, I find unbearable the thought of what will happen to the women of my country if it once again falls under the control of the insurgents and militants who now threaten it. In 2001, when the war in Afghanistan began, the liberation of Afghan women was one of the most important justifications for military intervention. Has the world now changed its mind about Afghan women? Is it ready to let them once again be killed and tortured by militants? Does the world no longer believe in the principles it supported in 2001?

Handing over Afghanistan to those who intend to keep the country centuries behind most of the world - to men who do not view women as human beings - would not only call into doubt the global commitment to human rights, it would also raise questions about the commitment of Western democracies to such rights and to democratic values. Bearing in mind how fragile the Afghan government is at this moment, it will not take long for the country's women to come under attack again. The consequences will be even more bitter this time because no matter how limited our success, we have at least managed to act in the forefront of public life in Afghanistan. We have had a taste of what it's like to have rights...

More at The Washington Post.

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How Generals Should Talk to Presidents - John S. D. Eisenhower, New York Times opinion.

In a recent speech in London, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top United States commander in Afghanistan, was blunt. Calling the military situation there “deteriorating,” he warned that the United States was going to have to “do things dramatically and even uncomfortably differently.” General McChrystal had already submitted a report, somehow leaked, requesting an additional 40,000 American troops. He acknowledged in his speech that in so speaking out while the issue was still under debate in the White House, he might have difficulties with his superiors. Comparisons have been made between this situation and the unfortunate instance in 2003 when the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, was punished for advising Congress of the enormous effort it would take to defeat and pacify Iraq in any meaningful way. General Shinseki was not removed outright, but he was treated shabbily by the Bush administration in more subtle ways until his retirement later that year. But the two cases were different. General Shinseki was testifying under oath before Congress; General McChrystal was speaking voluntarily, on his own.

As a former Army officer, I tend to be sympathetic to the generals who are placed in impossible situations, created partly by the framers of the Constitution in 1787. They designated the president as the commander in chief, but at the same time they gave Congress the power to raise and support armies and navies. This division of authority between two branches of government puts the head of a military service in an untenable position. Officers owe their loyalty to the president and have an obligation to resign if they are unable to carry out the commander in chief’s policies. At the same time, they must sometimes testify under oath to the Congress. Trapped in this way, most officers elect wisely to keep their public opinions vague...

More at The New York Times.

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Widening the Spectrum of Insurgency
by Stephen Phillips

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Warfare blogs, Department of Defense forums, and defense industry conferences have debated terms surrounding the current global conflict. This clash has a myriad descriptive names such as “The Global War on Terrorism,” “The Long War,” and “Overseas Contingency Operation.” Similarly, defense pundits have wrestled with the terms, asymmetric warfare, irregular warfare, and terrorism. Another definition that must be reviewed is “insurgency.”

Two salient questions are the catalyst for this discussion. First, should criminal enterprises that want to remove rather than replace government control and seek a passive rather than a complicit populous fit into the definition of insurgency? Second, can a non-violent overthrow of a government, a “velvet revolution,” be called an insurgency?

Download the full article: Widening the Spectrum of Insurgency

Stephen Phillips is a member of the Senior Professional Staff in the National Security Analysis Department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He is also a Naval Reservist serving as a faculty member at the National Defense Intelligence College. The views herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the organizations with which he is affiliated.

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See Cartoons by Cartoon by Hajo de Reijer - Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com - Email this Cartoon

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The U.S. Military Academy’s Department of History is pleased to invite you to a West Point Symposium on the History of Irregular Warfare, 18-20 November 2009.

The symposium will feature the scholarship of five cadet panel presenters with commentary by distinguished guest scholars, including: Dr. Stephen Biddle as our keynote speaker, Dr. Jeremy Black, Col. Robert Cassidy, Dr. Conrad Crane, Dr. George Herring, Dr. Brian Linn, and Dr. Peter Mansoor. Additionally, Dr. James Le Sueur (Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics, 2005) will present a special lecture on Algerian society since 1963. Col. Gian Gentile, a History faculty member, will participate as part of the “Visiting Scholars Panel” with Dr. Crane, Dr. Mansoor, and Col. Cassidy.

Invitation and POC Information

History of IW Symposium Agenda

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The Long Road to Indecision - Tom Donnelly, Center for Defense Studies

After White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s performances on the Sunday talkies, it’s getting harder and harder to avoid the conclusion that the Obama Administration is looking for almost any reason it can find to limit any further commitment to Afghanistan.

The latest line, per Emanuel but channeling Sen. John Kerry, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward and historian Gordon Goldstein–and in fact, channeling the ghosts of Lyndon Johnson and his advisers–is that, absent a “legitimate” partner in Kabul, American efforts would be fruitless. Therefore, we must wait for the question of Afghanistan’s elections to be resolved before additional US troops can be deployed...

A Question of Credibility - Tim Sullivan, Center for Defense Studies

As the troubling implications of the botched Afghan elections become more clear, Obama administration officials have begun to cite with increasing frequency the lack of a credible indigenous “partner” government in Afghanistan as the primary challenge in determining a new strategy for the country. The implication is that without a legitimate regime to support, a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign would be an exercise in futility. Sen. John Kerry took this argument one step further, suggesting that “even the further fulfillment of our mission that’s here [in Afghanistan] today” has been jeopardized by the marred elections.

Last week John Nagl and Richard Fontaine of the Center for a New American Security provided an excellent rebuttal to such arguments, pointing to the chaotic domestic political environment in Iraq prior to the adoption of the successful US troop surge and COIN campaign in 2007. In the case of Afghanistan, they draw an important distinction between perceptions of illegitimacy on the national level, and broader dissatisfaction among the Afghan population with local injustices, rightly concluding that “our main goal should be helping the Afghan government work at the local level - providing the marginal but tangible improvements in security, governance and prosperity that ordinary Afghans say they want, and stopping the corruption and abuses they personally contend with and resent.” ...

The Case for Humility in Afghanistan - Steve Coll, Foreign Policy

The United States has two compelling interests at issue in the Afghan conflict. One is the ongoing, increasingly successful but incomplete effort to reduce the threat posed by al Qaeda and related jihadi groups, and to finally eliminate the al Qaeda leadership that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. The second is the pursuit of a South and Central Asian region that is at least stable enough to ensure that Pakistan does not fail completely as a state or fall into the hands of Islamic extremists.

More than that may well be achievable. In my view, most current American commentary underestimates the potential for transformational changes in South Asia over the next decade or two, spurred by economic progress and integration. But there is no question that the immediate policy choices facing the United States in Afghanistan are very difficult. All of the courses of action now under consideration by the Obama administration and members of Congress carry with them risk and uncertainty...

Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis on Going Deep Rather than Long in Afghanistan - Herschel Smith, The Captain's Journal

Gareth Porter writing for the Asia Times discusses an unpublished paper written by Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis currently making its way around Washington. Rather than focus on what Porter says Davis says, we’ll briefly spend some time on the alternative Davis offers.

His paper is entitled Go Big or Go Deep: An Analysis of Strategy Options on Afghanistan. Davis’ first problem is that U.S. troops (and ISAF) are seen as “invaders” or “occupation forces.” Our troops have been there for eight years and are likely to be there many more under this plan, and this potential downfall of the campaign has not been given its due in the deliberations to date. His second problem with the go big option is that the requested troop levels (on the order of 40,000) is not nearly enough...

Afghanistan and the Problem of Legitimacy - Max Boot, Contentions

Before I came to Afghanistan, I thought that a runoff would be a good way to deal with the fallout from the disputed presidential election that took place in August. Now that I’ve been here a week, I’m not so sure. All the problems that plagued the first round of presidential balloting - fraud and insecurity - are likely to be present in the second round. They could even be worse because there will be less time to prepare for the second election. It would have to take place by mid-November at the latest, otherwise the onset of winter will make it impossible to distribute and collect the ballots. With little time to prepare or publicize, the turnout would be low, and fraud would no doubt occur - just as it did last time. The general feeling here is that Karzai would come out on top but that the voting would do little to enhance his legitimacy.

A better solution would be a power-sharing accord that brings his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, into the government. It is also important to appoint a chief of staff or some other senior official who would be charged with increasing the efficiency of Karzai’s highly inefficient administration...

Afghanistan is Just Not that Important… - David J. Rothkoph, Foreign Policy

... Still, as with any discussions concerning whether or not and how to conduct a war, this is a debate that has a strong sense of urgency about it. It also involves a host of really interesting questions about what our real objectives are, about whether this is a counter-insurgency or a counter-terrorism operation, about how victory can be measured, about who our real allies and enemies are, about how much cost we are willing to bear, about what the role for NATO should be, about how to deal with a corrupt, dysfunctional partner in Kabul, even about more fundamental issues such as how do we ultimately keep ourselves safe from terror, whether we can ever be successful at nation-building, and whether there is even truly a nation to build in a country like Afghanistan that is really (much as Iraq is) a confection of the minds of British imperialists that overlooks ancient tribal realities.

To those who say that the Obama administration should not be reconsidering a strategy it announced only last spring, my reaction is that's nonsense. We should constantly be reviewing our strategy based on the changing situation on the ground and the ebb and flow of other external priorities and factors. To those who say that the process has gone on too long, I also say, that's ridiculous given the human stakes involved...

Time to start working on Plan B - Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy

If I were President Obama (now there's a scary thought!), I'd ask some smart people on my foreign policy team to start thinking hard about "Plan B." What's Plan B? It's the strategy that he's going to need when it becomes clear that his initial foreign policy initiatives didn't work. Obama's election and speechifying has done a lot to repair America's image around the world -- at least in the short term -- in part because that image had nowhere to go but up. But as just about everyone commented when he got the Nobel Peace Prize last week, his foreign policy record to date is long on promises but short on tangible achievements. Indeed, odds are that the first term will end without his achieving any of his major foreign policy goals...

President Obama May Seem to Dither, But he is Ready to Strike - Andrew Sullivan, The Times

There is a strange quality to Barack Obama’s pragmatism. It can look like dilly-dallying, weakness, indecisiveness. But although he may seem weak at times, one of the words most applicable to him is something else entirely: ruthless. Beneath the crisp suit and easy smile there is a core of strategic steel.

In this respect, Obama’s domestic strategy is rather like his foreign one - not so much weakness but the occasional appearance of weakness as a kind of strategy. The pattern is now almost trademarked. He carefully lays out the structural message he is trying to convey. At home, it is: we all have to fix the mess left by Bush-Cheney. Abroad, it is: we all have to fix the mess left by Bush-Cheney. And then ... not much...

Robert Gates: Solidly in the Middle of the Afghan Strategy Storm - David Wood, Politics Daily

President Obama's war minister, the man responsible for the day-to-day oversight of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and dozens of other current and future hotspots, would much rather be somewhere else than DC and doesn't mind who knows it...

Yet for all his professed distaste for Washington, he has excelled there (Gates was the only CIA officer to rise from an entry-level position to become CIA director, and he is the only defense secretary in US history to be asked to stay on by a newly elected president). He has quietly earned the confidence and trust of major players across the capital's political and military communities...

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As the Commander in Chief Deliberates, Frustration Builds Within the Ranks - Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times.

Only nine months ago, the Pentagon pronounced itself reassured by the early steps of a new commander in chief. President Obama was moving slowly on an American withdrawal from Iraq, had retained former President George W. Bush’s defense secretary and, in a gesture much noticed, had executed his first military salute with crisp precision. But now, after nearly a month of deliberations by Mr. Obama over whether to send more American troops to Afghanistan, frustrations and anxiety are on the rise within the military.

A number of active duty and retired senior officers say there is concern that the president is moving too slowly, is revisiting a war strategy he announced in March and is unduly influenced by political advisers in the Situation Room. “The thunderstorm is there and it’s kind of brewing and it’s unstable and the lightning hasn’t struck, and hopefully it won’t,” said Nathaniel C. Fick, a former Marine Corps infantry officer who briefed Mr. Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign and is now the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a military research institution in Washington. “I think it can probably be contained and avoided, but people are aware of the volatile brew.” ...

More at The New York Times.

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Unity of Effort: Key to Success in Afghanistan - Christopher J. Lamb and Martin Cinnamond, Institute for National Strategic Studies.

The US Government strategy for success in Afghanistan unveiled by President Obama on March 27, 2009, emphasized a classic population-centric counter-insurgency approach. Now, however, that strategy is being reconsidered. The latest INSS Strategic Forum by Christopher J. Lamb and Martin Cinnamond, Unity of Effort: Key to Success in Afghanistan, makes a contribution to the ongoing debate over US strategy for Afghanistan. It argues: 1) unity of effort is a more important strategy variable than resources; 2) the counterinsurgency mission conflicts with and should take precedence over the counterterrorism mission; and 3) inadequate unity of effort within special operations has contributed to civilian casualties that cripple public support for international forces. Finding the Obama administration efforts to improve unity of effort laudable but insufficient, the research concludes with recommendations that support and extend the initiatives the administration has taken to date.

Unity of Effort: Key to Success in Afghanistan - Full Article

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Command Releases Approach to Operational Design Vision

U.S. Joint Forces Command has released a new vision on the approach to operational design, which provides guidance on how USJFCOM will advocate for the migration of design-related improvements from the services' doctrine, training and professional military education to a joint setting.

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The Civilian Surge Myth - Steven Metz, The New Republic.

How can we snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in Afghanistan? There's one solution that has attracted analysts of all stripes: a "civilian surge," where development and political advisers working for (or contracted by) the State department and the US Agency for International Development flood the country and turn the tide against the insurgents.

The logic, at least, is sound: It takes more than military success to defeat insurgents. Insurgency grows where a corrupt and weak government does not provide security, justice, and opportunity. Unless these underlying problems are resolved, the military can kill insurgents forever, and more will emerge. Insurgency is a symptom of deeper ills. The rub is that these deeper ills are not military, but political, economic, and social--things that armed forces are not prepared to fix...

There is consensus on the problem and general agreement on the solution, but absolutely no sense of how to make it happen. There is little chance that the United States will mobilize enough civilian capability to re-engineer backward states and keep it in the field during a protracted insurgency...

More at The New Republic. Also see the discussion at Small Wars Council.

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Small Wars Journal has featured the U.S. Army’s new Capstone Concept, the Army’s top-level doctrine for how it will prepare for conflict over the next two decades. The Army Capstone Concept calls for full-spectrum capability. But it also emphasizes the need for “high touch” skills, the language, cultural, historical, population, and personal skills required to be effective in low-intensity and irregular warfare environments.

It seems as if Russia’s military doctrine is going in exactly the opposite direction, if a recent article from Defense News is any indication. Some excerpts:

Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the powerful security council, said the conditions under which Russia could resort to atomic weapons are being reworked in the main strategy document and will be reviewed by President Dmitry Medvedev by the end of the year.

"The conditions have been revised for the use of nuclear weapons to rebuff an aggression with the use of conventional weapons, not only on a massive-scale but on a regional and even local level," Patrushev told the Izvestia newspaper.

"Variants are under considerations for the use of nuclear weapons depending on the situation and potential of a would-be aggressor," he said.

"In a critical situation for national security, a preventative nuclear strike on an aggressor is not ruled out."

One could call “a preventative nuclear strike on an aggressor” the Bush Doctrine on Steroids.

Russia is finding itself resorting to a nuclear-centered military doctrine because it is finding it more and more difficult to maintain adequate conventional military capabilities. 20 years ago Soviet conventional forces were massive and frightening – it was the U.S. and NATO that required a large inventory of tactical nuclear weapons to deter the Soviet armored behemoth in eastern Europe. Today, the situation is reversed – it is Russia that needs its remaining nuclear weapons to compensate for its conventional weakness.

Naturally, any country that has a declared or undeclared “no first use” policy can instantly drop that policy during a stressful moment. The problem with Russia’s doctrine is that it is doctrine – it is what Russia will plan for, prepare for, train for, and as a result, make more likely to occur.

President Obama (as did President Reagan) dreams of a world free of nuclear weapons. Strategically, no country would benefit more from this dream, at least at this moment in history, than the United States. That is the single most powerful reason why this dream will not come true.

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CNAS Releases Afghanistan Policy Brief by Andrew Exum

After eight years of conflict and an ongoing policy review by the Obama Administration, the future of Afghanistan remains uncertain. Yet, as the latest assessment in Washington takes place amidst a contested Afghan national election, conditions on the ground continue to deteriorate. The brief, authored by CNAS Fellow and U.S. Afghanistan policy expert Andrew Exum, is meant to serve as a guide for strategic Afghanistan policy planning by laying out the worst, most likely, and best-case scenario for what the country might look like in 24 months, and how U.S. policy might make each scenario more or less likely. Although all three scenarios involve risks, an Afghanistan at peace with itself and its neighbors remains a possibility.

In the “worst-case” and most unlikely scenario, Afghanistan returns to pre-9/11 conditions where insurgent groups again gain control of the nation, reestablish an Islamic Emirate, and grant refuge to transnational terror groups. This inevitably leads to civil war and furthers regional instability. In the “most-likely” scenario, the Obama Administration cautiously transitions to a coordinated counterterrorism mission where allied engagement is limited to training Afghan National Security Forces, employing precision airpower and conducting direct-action special operations. Given similar attempts to execute a small footprint-type mission in Afghanistan, the likelihood of failure is high and eventually leads to a protracted proxy war between the United States and Pakistan. In the third and “best-case” scenario, the United States and its allies agree to a fully resourced campaign to provide security for key population centers and continue to develop effective security forces. By committing to a foundation for peace in Afghanistan, the United States and its allies achieve its main policy objective of regional stability.

Download the full Afghanistan Policy Brief (PDF)

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Is There a Middle Way? - Stephen Biddle, The New Republic

General Stanley McChrystal's request to send more troops to Afghanistan has induced sticker shock for many Americans--including, apparently, President Obama. The integrated counterinsurgency, or COIN, strategy that McChrystal wants to pursue has many components: protecting Afghan civilians, rapidly expanding the Afghan army and police, reforming government, providing economic development assistance, weaning Taliban fighters and leaders away from Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, reconciling them into the new government, and targeting those who refuse. This makes it a demanding strategy that McChrystal reportedly believes will require providing at least an additional 10,000 to 40,000 U.S. troops and more than doubling existing Afghan forces to a total of 400,000 indigenous soldiers and police. (Full disclosure: I served as a member of General McChrystal's assessment team in June and July 2009, but I do not speak for his command, and the views expressed here are strictly my own.) This price tag has further galvanized opposition to a war whose support was already fading fast.

Few, however, actually want to leave Afghanistan outright. Instead, most pair their opposition to reinforcement with support for a middle way--a more limited presence intended to secure U.S. interests without the cost and risk of escalation. Opponents have proposed at least a half-dozen such "middle ways," ranging from greater reliance on drone-based counterterrorism strikes to early pursuit of a negotiated settlement to end the war. The specifics are often fuzzy; none has been articulated with the detail of McChrystal's proposal, particularly regarding troop requirements. But most are tantamount to splitting off a piece of McChrystal-style integrated COIN and executing it alone. Some critics propose pursuing pieces in combination, but none attempts the totality, and, especially, none includes McChrystal's large U.S. ground combat presence for protecting Afghan civilians. For all, the underlying idea is to reduce the cost of the war without abandoning the U.S. interest in denying Al Qaeda a base for attacking the West or destabilizing neighboring Pakistan.

It is easy to see why such middle ways are so popular. They could lighten the burden on the federal deficit. They could put fewer Americans in harm's way. They would seem to better fit the U.S. interests at stake, which are real but limited and indirect. They appeal to the centrism of many American voters. The problem is that they probably won't work.

The reasons vary from proposal to proposal, but the basic problem is that the pieces of COIN are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts; implementing just one or two pieces alone undermines their effectiveness. It might make sense to do less and accept a greater risk of failure, depending on one's tolerance for risk and cost. But there is no magic middle way between the McChrystal recommendation and total withdrawal that offers comparable odds at lower cost. In counterinsurgency, less is not more...

Much more at The New Republic.

Stephen Biddle is the Roger Hertog Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Toward a Kilcullen-Biden Plan?
Bounding Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan
by Dr. Tony Corn

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At this particular juncture, the U.S. simply cannot afford a 500 billion dollar open-ended escalation. Nor can it opt for an incremental (“middle road”) strategy which would fail to create the psychological effects required in both the West and Afghanistan.

A temporary 40,000 surge is doable, but only if the core of the Obama strategy is a “Kilcullen-Biden” plan combining convocation of a loya jirga domestically with a regionalization of the Afghan question diplomatically. Let’s go massive for a limited time, and “clear, hold, and build” as much as we can. If it does not work, a regional negotiation provides ample cover for a drawdown.

COIN diehards will argue that in the absence an explicit long-term commitment, large segments of the Afghan population will continue to do fencing-sitting. Guess what: if the West is “the West” rather than just another Bananastan, it is because, from the British in 1688 to the Americans in 1776, and from the French in 1789 to the Romanians in 1989, Westerners decided that to “live free or die” was a more honorable option than forever “fencing-sitting.” At the end of the day, if 30 million Afghans want to be known as a nation of fence-sitters unwilling to stand up to 15,000 insurgents, it is their problem first, that of their immediate neighbors second, and only third that of the West itself.

COIN Maximalists and Minimalist can at least agree on one thing: whatever the option chosen, McChrystal is the man for the job. On the one hand, as mentioned earlier, the ISAF Commander has a grasp of tribal politics worthy of a professional anthropologist. On the other hand, reading between the lines of the report, it is not hard to see that General McChrystal has the kind of quiet determination that led a General Foch, on the eve of the Marne offensive, to defiantly report:

Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I shall attack.

Download the full article: Toward a Kilcullen-Biden Plan?

Dr. Tony Corn is the author of “World War IV as Fourth-Generation Warfare” (Policy Review, January 2006). He is currently on leave from the State Department and writing a book on The Long War. This article is a follow-up to “The Art of Declaring Victory and Going Home: Strategic Communication and the Management of Expectations” published in Small Wars Journal on September 18, 2009 (before the release of the McChrystal report). The opinions expressed in this essay are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the point of view of the U.S. State Department or the U.S. government.

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Pakistan Fights Back - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

Until a few months ago, Pakistani officials often used the term "miscreants" when they described the Taliban fighters operating from the western tribal areas. This moniker conveyed the sense that the Taliban was a nuisance - a ragtag band of fanatics and gangsters who could be placated with peace deals - rather than a mortal threat to the nation. That state of denial appears to be over. This week's offensive against Taliban sanctuaries in South Waziristan is the latest sign that Pakistan has awakened to the seriousness of its domestic terrorism problem.

Here's how one of Pakistan's top military commanders put it to me, expressing sentiments that are widely shared among his colleagues: "We must win, if we want our children to be living a life of their choice and belief, and not of these beasts. I wish I could tell you how much I hate them. We want to get our beautiful and peaceful country back from their vicious clutches. We cannot allow them to destroy our future." Popular anger against the Taliban has been building this year. Back in April, the country seemed dazed and politically paralyzed. But as the Islamic extremists broke out of the Swat Valley that month and moved closer to the capital, something changed. The army launched an aggressive campaign in Swat, the Taliban fighters were pushed back and the public cheered...

More at The Washington Post.

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There’s No Substitute for Troops on the Ground - Max Boot, New York Times opinion.

“I hope people who say this war is unwinnable see stories like this. This is what winning in a counterinsurgency looks like.” Lt. Col. William F. McCollough, commander of the First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, is walking me around the center of Nawa, a poor, rural district in southern Afghanistan’s strategically vital Helmand River Valley. His Marines, who now number more than 1,000, arrived in June to clear out the Taliban stronghold. Two weeks of hard fighting killed two Marines and wounded 70 more but drove out the insurgents. Since then the colonel’s men, working with 400 Afghan soldiers and 100 policemen, have established a “security bubble” around Nawa. Colonel McCollough recalls that when they first arrived the bazaar was mostly shuttered and the streets empty. “This town was strangled by the Taliban,” he says. “Anyone who was still here was beaten, taxed or intimidated.”

Today, Nawa is flourishing. Seventy stores are open, according to the colonel, and the streets are full of trucks and pedestrians. Security is so good we were able to walk around without body armor - unthinkable in most of Helmand, the country’s most dangerous province. The Marines are spending much of their time not in firefights but in clearing canals and building bridges and schools. On those rare occasions when the Taliban try to sneak back in to plant roadside bombs, the locals notify the Marines...

More at The New York Times.

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The Influence of Seapower Upon Small Wars
A Review Essay
by Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Armstrong

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Over the past decade the United States has rediscovered the challenges of counter-insurgency, unconventional operations, and hybrid wars. Much of the discussion and development of twenty-first century warfare has been led by the efforts of land forces. The United States Army and Marine Corps worked together jointly to develop a new counter-insurgency doctrine, studying the past as a way to help focus the experiences of the present. While the role of air power has also been sharply debated, the role of sea power has had little discussion. Maritime forces have long played a vital role in small wars, from the mercenary army led by Naval Agent William Eaton and his Marines in the First Barbary War to riverine forces in the Mekong Delta during Vietnam. It is time for Sailors, Marines, and Guardsmen to learn from their history, and realize that they have a central role in today’s global conflict.

The following three books provide important background for members of the sea services and students of complex modern warfare when approaching today’s global challenges. Counter-insurgency doctrine is founded on the experiences of the past. The effort to develop naval irregular warfare would benefit greatly by plotting a similar course. These books are selected neither because they provide a comprehensive view of the subject, nor because they share a philosophical approach. Instead, they are books that provide a starting point from which a study of naval power in small wars can set sail.

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Lieutenant Commander Benjamin “BJ” Armstrong is a Naval Aviator who has served as an Amphibious Search and Rescue and Special Warfare Pilot and an Advanced Helicopter Flight Instructor. He holds a MA in military history and has written on air power and naval history. He is a prior SWJ contributor and his articles and reviews have appeared in numerous journals including Defense & Security Analysis, Strategic Insights, and The Journal of Military History.

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On September 17th, President Obama scrapped the Bush administration’s plans for missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. That day, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman General James Cartwright gave a briefing on the Obama administration’s “stronger, smarter, and swifter” European missile defense program.

On September 17th I had both praise and some doubts for the new plan. I liked the shift to a distributed, flexible, and more mobile system. On the other hand, the plan seemed vague and incomplete and not very reassuring to allies in eastern Europe. In particular, I wondered where the X-band radar, previously slated for the Czech Republic and highly praised for its capabilities by General Cartwright, was going to end up. Without a convincing plan for missile defense sensors in Europe, it is hard to claim that there really is a missile defense plan for Europe.

It seems as if vagueness on the X-band radar and other sensors has turned into confusion and perhaps paralysis. In the end, Russian objections to high-powered missile defense radars, and the Obama administration’s acquiescence to those objections, is for now gutting the administration’s credibility on European missile defense. The Bush administration found out that its missile defense sensors would annoy the Russians but that annoyance would not stop the U.S. from having a missile defense system in Europe. The Obama team does not seem willing to reach this same conclusion. Until it does, it does not really have a European missile defense plan.

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