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War: Sometimes There ‘Is’ a Substitute for Victory

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09.24.2012 at 04:30pm

War: Sometimes There ‘Is’ a Substitute for VictoryJerusalem Post op-ed by COL Gian Gentile.

Sometimes the way a military fights a war results in it reaching a point where it is no longer worth the amount of blood and treasure invested to fight it in that way.

… But nation building in Afghanistan to prevent the return of a handful of al- Qaida fighters is a military mission without end.

I mean really, how long does it take to build modern, functioning states from scratch? It took the United States nearly 100 years to work out the fundamental social and political issue that divided it, namely slavery. In Europe it took hundreds and hundreds of years for small feudal entities to combine under centralized governments to form modern states.

So why do the US and its military think that it can achieve this in Afghanistan in only a few years? Because the American military, with buy-in from its political leaders, has come to accept a narrative that says nation building anywhere in the world can be done, if only the right general is put in charge and the tactics are tweaked…

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Dave Maxwell

Since Gian brought up Korea in his opening remarks, I will say that if the hostilities do restart on the Peninsula, this time there can be no substitute for victory there.

CBCalif

As the Col. perceptively notes, the core policy objective from the start of the war, as expressed clearly and repeatedly by senior American political and military officials, was the destruction of al-Qaida. A quite limited policy goal for sure – and one that was largely achieved only a few years into the war. Instead of grasping this basic strategic reality – that the US had achieved its core policy objective – the American military and its political masters convinced themselves that the only way to keep al-Qaida at bay was to build a modern state in the Hindu Kush. One can only wonder how the US military allowed such a an initially successful well conducted operation in Afghanistan to morph into what will be the costly and disastrous nation building effort it is now conducting.

As he also noted, “nation building in Afghanistan to prevent the return of a handful of al- Qaida fighters is [not only] a military mission without end,” (to which I would add) it is a fools errand on which the US military was sent by a ridiculous doctrine (COIN) developed by some of its own generals and men of other ranks. It makes one marvel that they could not see that it was a mission without end and one that could never succeed. Despite the books published by some of the COIN adherents about America’s Vietnam experience, they learned absolutely nothing from the lessons of that conflict, and believed (apparently) as noted above that if you just tweaked the tactics they could do what a prior generation of the US military failed to accomplish.

If (hopefully only some) US military officers of today believe “nation building anywhere in the world can be done, if only the right general is put in charge and the tactics are tweaked,” they are in need of a serious purging and being replaced by officers who understand the true missions of the military. That is to conduct conventional attacks even when modified as in the early days of Afghanistan, to carry out SOG, drone, or other type raids, to assist existing and willing military organizations through training to carry out operations against insurgents, to conduct sea based searches and interdiction, to prepare for the next Gulf war type conflict which will come around, to develop effective anti-missile and ASW systems, and to perform the countless other activities of that nature, and to never again engage in nation building or large scale COIN activities.

In the end, the only COIN performance that will be remembered as successful will have been Petraeus’s presentations before the Congress.

Dayuhan

If victory is achieving one’s goal, the first step toward victory is selection of a goal that is sensible, practical, concrete, and achievable. “Armed nation building” is none of those, and its pursuit is an invitation to failure. There can be endless debate over the flaws and deficiencies in the means used to pursue that goal, but some attention must be paid to the question of whether the goal ever made sense in the first place. I hope somebody’s listening.

GHD

As usual, Gian is hitting right in the X-ring (dead center Bullseye) with his analysis of where our policy of “Nation Building via Armed Forces” is seriously flawed.

Hopefully, both our civilian and military leadership will wake up after November and take a serious look in the mirror of future policy, w/o the careerist egos involved, and start to put both our country and military on a path of common sense doctrine, and national security, limited-objective based deployments.

SWJED

Gian, BTW, thanks, for all you do. – Dave

carl

Gian makes a few…says some things that don’t quite stand up in the article.

First he says that AQ only has a handful of fighters. Maybe. But since it is not a collection of Revolutionary War veterans, its roster is not static and the death of the last name on the roster does not mean the end of the organization or one like enough to it to matter. If Taliban & Co were to regain Afghanistan I suspect recruiting would pick up nicely.

I know it is very fashionable to decry “armed nation building” but I see it a little different. We kicked Taliban & Co out because they wouldn’t give up AQ. Then there was no gov in Afghanistan. Taliban & Co wanted it back so there had to be something put in its place. We more or less did a more or less bad job of doing that. Taliban & Co still wanted the place back as did Pak Army/ISI who were backing them. Our new men in Afghanistan could not stand up to the Pak Army/ISI sponsored Taliban & Co so we had to help them with that. Since MO and the boys weren’t averse to shooting people dead we had to arrange to shoot back in order to keep them from (so far) taking the place over again. That required arms. Call it what you will, I don’t see how we could have done much else than what we have maladroitly done for years given that we won’t see and treat the Pak Army/ISI for the enemy they are. (Geesh guys, at least we don’t have to buy for them the bullets they use to shoot us.)

Gian also plays the sophist when he conflates the resolution of the slavery issue with building an effective gov in the US. The states had effective governments for a long time before the Revolution and the country had an effective gov the day the Brits left. That doesn’t have much to do with a Afghanistan. From our point of view a modern functioning state on the order of the US or Europe, as Gian implies in the article, is not needed. All that is needed in Afghanistan is a state that is strong enough to keep the Islamo-fascists out and Afghanistan had a gov that could do that prior to the king being deposed. That is a tall enough order but not nearly on the order of making Switzerland of the Hindu Kush. Gian is engaging in the what I believe is called the fallacy of the false alternative.

As far as the British leaving Afghanistan in the 1840s, they did, after they beat them up some. Who needs Afghanistan when you have the Punjab? But they stayed involved in the country and its affairs for the next 100 years. They had to because the Russians were coming and the tribesmen like to raid. So the Afghans were able to successfully stay Afghan because they were able to play off the Brits against the Russkis. Gian should mention that.

Gian is right that it is important that the basic strategic reality be grasped, but it is not that AQ is down to its last 6 men. It is that the Pak Army/ISI is the primary enemy. Or if we have grasped that we don’t have the moxie to do anything about it-same difference.

Gian always makes the argument that good generals don’t make a difference but (and boy will I get in trouble for saying this) that is the argument of the Army personnel management system. ‘A general is a general is a general. And this years iteration to be in charge of Afghanistan is…’ People do make a difference and how they do what they do makes a difference. In the conflict in Iraq, the big boss may or may not have made the difference but the way Gian frames his argument the baby and the bathwater end up in the same place. (The big bosses in Afghanistan have made no difference at all, rotating in and out yearly makes it impossible.)

Sometimes it seems to me that Gian wants the Army to do what it did after Vietnam, forget all about small war and hope it never comes back.

Bill C.

Nation-building has less to do with AQ and more to do with core United States foreign policy objectives writ large. This, the reason why nation-building activities — in Afghanistan and elsewhere — continue even though AQ has largely been subdued.

The core foreign policy objective in question is:

To provide for United States security by transforming states and societies such that these might be made to cause the United States/the modern world fewer problems and made to offer the United States/the modern world greater utility and usefulness instead.

The great power states and societies of Germany and Japan have been so transformed.

Progress is believed to have been made in favorably transforming the great power states and societies of China and Russia also.

To complete the job, the objective became to similarly transform and incorporate the lesser and remaining problematic/troublesome “outlier” states and societies. (Will take, in certain instances, some form of “nation-building.”)

Thus, the question becomes, is there a “substitute for victory” re: transforming and incorporating these lesser and remaining problematic/troublesome “outlier” states and societies and providing for United States/modern world security thereby?

Or can United States/modern world security be provided for — not by transforming and incorporating these lesser and remaining “outlier” states and societies — but by simply working around them and/or by dealing with them in some fashion other than transformation and incorporation?

(9/11, Syria, etc., possibly arguing against this latter proposal?)

meanwhile

>>>>> Bill C:
The core foreign policy objective in question is:

To provide for United States security by transforming states and societies such that these might be made to cause the United States/the modern world fewer problems and made to offer the United States/the modern world greater utility and usefulness instead.

The great power states and societies of Germany and Japan have been so transformed.

<<<<<< Does any Western nation other than America produce people so terrifyingly ignorant of history? Both Germany and Japan had been modern industrial nations with a history of democratic government and supporting insititutions - eg functioning police and courts - before WW2. Hitler, for goodness sake, was (more or less) elected to power. >>>>>>>
Progress is believed to have been made in favorably transforming the great power states and societies of China and Russia also.
<<<<<<< Russia and China have certainly been "transformed" recently, but the US hasn't had much to do with either - other than negatively in Russia's case, where the US persuaded the Russians to privatize state assets before setting up a functioning legal system and social security net, leading to the gangster years of the Russian economy, which themselves led to Putin's "managed democracy."

Bill C.

I have not studied Clausewitz at all and so I, obviously, cannot intelligently address or answer the following questions. But I would like to ask those who have studied Clausewitz, and know more about these things, to consider these questions:

1. In looking for a reason why armed nation-building/state and societal transformation was undertaken — and continued — in Afghanistan, then should we look toward Clausewitz and his contention that war is a continuation of politics/policy by other means?

2. Are my arguments below (beginning with my Sept 26th, 11:04 AM entry) somewhat consistent with, and somewhat supported by, (a) the relevant facts and (b) what Clausewitz was saying?

Hammer999

Nation building isn’t the job of the US Military… Why are we doing it then? Who’s is it? The State Dept and the Peace Corps. We have no history of building nations… Ok we Germany and Japan back together after WWII, but that can hardly be compared to a grass roots build like we are attempting in Afghanistan. Did the Senior leadership in the military join to fight and win our nations wars or because they thought they would look good in the uniform??? To the politicians in uniform… If you like politics so much, get out and become one. Additionally I find it laughable at what retired brass is willing to run their mouths about, that they wouldn’t while in uniform. Sickening…