...last year's military successes in Iraq came at a very high price. The "surge" of five brigades and the extension of Army combat tours in Iraq from 12 to 15 months has strained the Army to the breaking point. Neither the Army nor the Marine Corps has a reserve of ground troops to handle other crises. Meanwhile, the Taliban is regaining strength in Afghanistan and the lawless border regions of Pakistan, and the opium production that funds their insurgency hit record highs last year. And the foreseeable consequences of a hasty U.S. withdrawal from Iraq -- instability in the region, an empowered and crowing Iran, a chaotic Iraq wracked by humanitarian catastrophes -- could easily reverse last year's gains and provide a new home for terrorism in the Middle East. The fight is far from won.
For starters, we must shore up Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently committed 3,000 more desperately needed Marines to Afghanistan, beginning next month. But it would take an increase of more than 100,000 soldiers and Marines to give NATO commanders in Afghanistan the force ratios that Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has enjoyed. We don't have the troops.
The best short-term solution is rapidly expanding the Iraqi and Afghan security forces to hold towns cleared by U.S. forces. Local forces, stiffened by foreign advisers, have historically been the keys to success in counterinsurgency warfare. As such, I've been among the serving officers and veterans who've urged the U.S. Army to create a standing Adviser Corps...
Comments
To be fair, I don't think that (100K of U.S. troops) is what he had in mind, he was just using the number as a relative comparison to our major theater in the context of the larger larger war (I qualify major in terms of resources applied). I also think he may have done so to show the challenges of resourcing even one such effort in an environment that has a port, and reasonable LOCs with states we have some support infrastructure established in.
With regards to establishing security in Afghanistan, I think what LTC Nagl is getting at is that the best way is to help build Afghan capacity in its security forces. To do this more effectively he's advocating a stronger advisory presence (it does not have to be solely U.S.)that gets after the train, advise and assist pieces to help Afghanistan raise the numbers and the security infrastructure it would need to C2, sustain, administer, etc.
The security infrastructure is important, you build in a great deal of risk if you raise capacity, but not the capability required to wield it, sustain it, and maintain it. Even if the Afghans were to field the numbers, and the indigenous forces were less tied to the types of LOG we are - e.g. they are able to legitimately forage, are culturally attuned enough to provide correct compensation and remain in keeping with HN attitudes, or they are raised and garrisoned from the local villages from which they will operate, etc. there will still be challenges there to maintain the LOCs for other reasons. I do agree that the value of developing HN capacity will prove far more sustainable then attempting to do likewise with foreign troops, and that if done correctly will result in a more effective security force, but its a good idea to point out that a great number of states who we might consider as having more security capacity (then Afghanistan), are very limited in what they can actually secure (either spatially, temporally, or both). Certainly Afghanistan's neighbors have some real issues with spaces the central government cannot control or influence.
In the broader leveraging of national power, the LTC Nagl mentions the need to engage more robustly in a "whole of government" approach that could help build capacity in a partner's ability to project those things which make "government" attractive (those are my words not his so if I've mis-characterized the rationale behind the requirement I apologize) and can build on security gains, or in some cases enable security gains - sometimes it may be a "raid and road project" that leads to greater long term local civ-security cooperation, sometimes it might be road project that leads to a an agreement for a local combat outpost and tips from which other security operations are generated. The two ideas work hand in hand in a way we used to think of as limited to combined arms to create conditions in which new opportunities can be created, identified and followed through to extend governance. I'll come back to that in a minute, because I think there has to be a discussion about the adherence to it as a kind of dogma. First though, its important to point out that the tools to which the author points to (DoS, DoJ, and others) are not themselves currently organized, trained, equipped, manned, funded to build capacity in foreign states in the ways , levels and to the extent that we are discussing. I'm pretty sure he knows this, and his point was probably not made under an assumption that there is a vast reserve of inter-agency folks already well suited to the needs he points out.
This gets to the final piece about grand strategy in achieving our objectives. We often refer to strategy in terms of ends, ways and means. The "end" being the political objective we are trying to achieve, and the importance of that objective determining how much in terms of blood and treasure, domestic and international political capital, effort in terms of our own restructuring etc we are willing to risk in order to achieve that "end". In terms of defining the importance of the "end", the state needs to determine if it has (or can generate) the "means" and sustain the required "will" to achieve the "end" in the face of the enemy and the conditions in which the enemy operates - a sort of "who wants it more and what are they willing to sacrifice to accomplish it?" question emerges.
To get to the answer of that question, a state such as ours must define the consequences of forfeiting the overall outcome, and must also tie efforts within the greater struggle to that outcome - we've seen the great and heated debates surrounding our continued involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan - and we've also seen the influence of domestic politics in attempting to clarify particular points, or to obscure them - some of this is probably due to individualism, some of it is probably due to idealism - but domestic politics in a democracy do and always have played a strong role in influencing the outcome of foreign policy objectives.
Once the "end" has been defined as being worth the expenditure of resources, and as being feasible in achieving (as I alluded to earlier, it could be a very subjective assessment), then the discussion of the means and ways required to achieve the objective need to be addressed. In this case the means I think LTC Nagl was referring to will require a different way of thinking about the manner in which the governmental agencies *DoD, DoS, CIA, DHS, etc), at a minimum are organized, manned, equipped, funded, trained, and may in fact require legislation authorizing them to function differently then they have at least recently operated.
The reasons for which may be that the "ways" we have identified as being the best ones in terms of potential for success, actions available to us within our strategic culture and minimizing operational risk are incongruent with the current means available to achieve them.
In order to really do what we say we are trying to achieve to win against an enemy who can advantage himself by conditions inherent to a developing world, we must deny him freedom of movement and action (both physical and idealogical) in places not only where he is operating, but in places where he "might" operate that lend themselves to his strategy.
That is a tall order. The first question that needs to be asked is what are the consequences for abandoning the objective given our interests abroad and our interconnectivity on almost every level with the developing world? Certainly a related question is if we were to abandon part of the world to this enemy, what happens? What comes next? What about our friends and partners who while not seeming an immediate target, become one as the enemy gains more means and develops new capabilities providing for new ways to grow - and reach us. In a very pragmatic sense, what are the stakes for the enemy, and how does he see us as a threat, both in the immediate sense and the long term, both directly and indirectly? What would be his rationale for stopping short of directly attacking us again, and has any of his demonstrated actions lent credibility to the notion that the enemy can be accommodated?
Are there limits to what U.S. Military power can achieve? Absolutely. Are there limits to what U.S. National power can achieve? I'd have to say yes here as well. But the question here is determining if what we are trying to achieve (it may be decided that we "must" achieve) fall within the possibilities of what can be achieved, and is it worth fundamentally changing parts of ourselves in order to do so.
Lots happened in response to 9/11 and in broader regards to America's role in the post Cold War environment. I do think the two are related, the challenge represented by the bi-polar world kept the expansion of certain ideas and practices in check, once that was removed the world changed (faster)- combined with things like the proliferation of information through the Internet, affordable air travel, widespread capitalism, new and expanded trade practices, migrations toward urban centers, and many other factors which I think gain synergy off multiple other factors - and we get the hostile byproducts which threaten us such as proliferation of WMD technologies and sciences, increased competition for limited resources, transnational crime, pandemics, International terrorism, volatile states, cyber-threats, states with regionally aggressive agendas who sow greater instability through non-state actors, etc. which also combine in certain areas and gain synergy. Some of these security challenges are short term and may not be existential in nature (although some may be, and some while not being existential to our state, may be existential to somebody's), others may be long term threats, and although we have not made the correlation given inability to see how they will evolve, could become existential - if not physically, then economically or ideologically.
I realize I went rather long, but the article left a great deal unsaid, and these days it may not be enough to know what we should do, I think we need to know why we are doing it, and what are the consequences of (or of not) doing it.
Best, Rob