Counterinsurgency Benchmarks in Afghanistan
Lies, Damn Lies and Counterinsurgency Benchmarks – Carlos Lozada, Washington Post opinion.
Whatever strategy President Obama chooses for Afghanistan, you can be sure that “benchmarks” or “metrics” will be a big part of the prime-time news conference. “Going forward, we will not blindly stay the course,” Obama said in March, when he first reassessed the war. “Instead, we will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable.”
So, how do we measure success in Afghanistan? If Obama opts for a narrow counterterrorism approach, the ultimate benchmark is simple: no terrorist attacks against the American homeland. But if he goes with the full McChrystal – a long-term, fully resourced counterinsurgency, with lots of new troops – the indicators of success become murkier.
Acknowledging that “using metrics in Afghanistan is more art than science,” Brookings Institution scholars Jason Campbell, Michael E. O’Hanlon and Jeremy Shapiro map out the key indicators for a counterinsurgency war in the latest issue of Policy Review. In Iraq, they note, the most critical measures focused on violence and civilian deaths; in Afghanistan, “the most important metrics are those that gauge progress in the capacity and viability of the government.” …
More at The Washington Post.
How to Measure the War – Jason Campbell, Michael E. O’Hanlon and Jeremy Shapiro, Policy Review.
How to tell if a counterinsurgency campaign is being won? Sizing the force correctly for a stabilization mission is a key ingredient – and it has been the subject of much discussion in the modern American debate. But in fact, there is no exact formula for sizing forces. Even if there were, getting the numbers right would hardly ensure success. Troops might not perform optimally if poorly prepared for the mission; the security environment might pose too many daunting challenges for even properly sized and trained forces to contend with; indigenous forces might not be up to the job of gradually accepting primary responsibility for their country’s security themselves; and the politics of the country in question might not evolve in a favorable direction due to the actions of internal or external spoilers. So to know if we are being successful, we must also track and study results on the ground.
In conventional warfare, identifying the momentum of battle is a fairly straightforward undertaking. Predicting ultimate outcomes is still very difficult, but determining who is “ahead” at a given moment is usually feasible. Movement of the frontlines, attrition rates, industrial production of war materiel, and logistical sustainability of forces in the field provide fairly obvious standards by which to assess trends. But counterinsurgency and stabilization operations – like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan – are different, and more complex. They also appear to be the future of warfare. How do we measure progress in such situations? …
More at Policy Review.
