I wrote about David Kilcullen two years ago, in a piece called Knowing the Enemy. Few experts understand counterinsurgency and counterterrorism better than this former Australian army officer and anthropology Ph.D, who has advised the American, British, and Australian governments, was one of General Petraeus's strategic whizzes at the start of the surge, in early 2007, and writes so well that you'd never imagine he's spent his whole career in government, the military, and academia. Kilcullen is now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, which has provided Obama with foreign-policy advisers and advice.
This week, Kilcullen agreed to do an e-mail Q. & A. on Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he's spent a lot of time, and where the most pressing foreign crisis awaits the new Administration. Though Kilcullen is still an adviser to the State Department, he emphasized that his views are his own. And they are characteristically blunt...
Read the Q&A at The New Yorker.
Also - Dave will be a guest of CNN this Sunday (1 PM ET) on Fareed Zakaria's show GPS - the subject - counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.
Comments
<i><a href="http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/266151">Why a Smaller Footprint is Good</a></i> by John Adams Wickham, <i>Arizona Daily Star</i>, 11 November 2008.
<i>The time may be right for Americans to re-examine our policy to fight insurgencies. For many years, U.S. forces and dollars have been used to fight insurgencies with a big U.S. presence, including large bases, vast storage depots and extensive contractor activities. This approach has produced mixed results.
Local populations have come to view this large footprint as an infringement on sovereignty and believe that it has engendered wider conflict as well as insurgent support.
Given the probability of future insurgencies with the so-called global war on terror, pressures will persist for continued substantial deployments of U.S. forces and expenditures of considerable resources rather than considering potentially effective alternatives.
As in Vietnam and now in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. military leaders rightly believe that U.S. forces are far superior in traditional military skills to indigenous people. So we naturally will try to take the lead in combat. We tend to give fewer resources to the alternative of preparing and supporting local forces to do the job...</i>
<I>If the problem in Afghanistan was defined as the al-Queda "enemy" then perhaps other options might be considered for subsequent policy, strategy and operational methods there.</I>
I think that's it.
Gian,
Have you read Bing West's latest in the current <a href="http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20122">The National Interest</a>? See specific quote <a href="http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=59919&postcount=3">h…;.
Gian, as usual we are more in agreement than not on most of this issue. Thanks for the find and announcement of the excellent Wickham article you mention and which can be easily located with a search engine. I recommend that article for all to read.
It should be noted that John Wickham was one of the few Chiefs of Staff, Army who brought far reaching and enduring change to the Army during the 1975-2001 period. I may have grumbled at no smoking and less alcohol but it certainly needed to be done. That's semi-frivolous; he brought far more important organizational and operational change as well.
I strongly agree with your last paragraph -- except I'll de-politicize it and do that advisedly because just as the Wickham article says, for real and enduring change the indigenous folks have to do it themselves because the US government, the political side, is prone to shift and lose interest...
"<i>Perhaps DoD and the Armed Forces will embrace creativity instead of dogma and at least consider other options for dealing with the problems in Afghanistan and other unstable parts of the world.</i>"
Rightly or wrongly, Kilkullen channels Galula, et al. There is not originality (or at least a serious consideration for very different alternatives) in his concept for changes in policy, strategy, and operations in Afghanistan to what is going on now from what David Galula would have called for if he were present, or for that matter other counter-Maoist counterinsurgency experts of the early 1960s like Sir Robert Thompson.
The sophistication and articulateness of Kilkullens argument should not belie the fact that it is still a rehashing of the oil spot approach to counterinsurgency and nation building using the method of clearing, holding and building.
Perhaps this is the right approach to Afghanistan in terms of policy, strategy and operational method.
But based on the intellectual climate of the American Army and other parts of the American Defense Establishment Kilkullens approach does seem to be the ONLY one that we are able to come up with. It is in this sense that we are mired in dogma, unable to think creatively in terms of options about how to deal with the situation in Afghanistan and other unstable parts of the world.
Kilkullen concludes the interview with George Packer and defines the "problem" in Afghanistan as essentially one of population security and protection of the Afghani people: a classic Galula and Thompson-like definition of a "problem" in any counterinsurgency. But by so defining the problem in this way, the subsequent policy, strategy and operational method for Afghanistan are pre-determined: existential involvement of substantial American combat forces for years to come.
There are other ways to define the problem, or center of gravity, in Afghanistan. If the problem in Afghanistan was defined as the al-Queda "enemy" then perhaps other options might be considered for subsequent policy, strategy and operational methods there. In this different conceptual formulation of the problem perhaps a substantial American combat presence on the ground might not be necessary and instead the "enemy" in Afghanistan might be dealt with by other means of military power than conventional combat forces on the ground trying to win the hearts and minds of the population. Important use of American "soft power" might also be applied in innovative ways that become decoupled with American military power and long term, militarized nation building.
But because parts of the American Defense Establishment are intellectually dominated by thinking representative of analysts like Kilkullen, we do not seem to be able to break out of this conceptual straightjacket.
There are other voices out there who question and probe at the dogma. The best example is of an opinion article by former Army Chief of Staff General (retired) John A Wickham in the regional newspaper The Arizona Daly Star (9 November 2008) titled "Why a Smaller Footprint is Good." General Wickham, by the way, as Army Chief from 1983 to 1987 helped to create Army Light Divisions designed among other things to be a principle force in the conduct of small wars and insurgencies. In this very recent opinion piece General Wickham argues that "the time may be right for Americans to reexamine our policy to fight insurgencies."
Perhaps the new Administration will embrace creativity instead of dogma and at least consider other options for dealing with the problems in Afghanistan and other unstable parts of the world.