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Originally posted at Bullets and Ballots.
Photo by Cpl Colby Brown / isafmedia.
The death of counterinsurgency continues. According to the New York Times, the relative merits of the doctrine, with its relative ineffectiveness in Afghanistan, is driving a rethink among West Point’s nerds of militarism. (I use the term “nerd” as an academic, therefore as a nerd. So, it’s OK.)
I am more interested in the big picture of counterinsurgency, rather than the specifics of tactics and the internal squabbles of militarists surrounding it. For examples from a more military planning perspective see here, here, and here.
The first point to make is that “counterinsurgency” shouldn’t be seen just as a military doctrine, but as a product of historical circumstance as well. It is a predictable reaction to a colonial situation. The American love affair with counterinsurgency began, after all, when it appeared that Donald Rumsfeld’s ideas about military strategy were less than brilliant and thus some generals in the field — tasked with managing an ill-conceived adventure in Iraq and a neglected one in Afghanistan — had to figure out how to achieve some semblance of stability. It was elevated to an all-encompassing “doctrine” by a crowd of enterprising soldier-academics and craven politicos trying to sound smart.
The main problem with the theory of counterinsurgency is that it rests on two problematic assumptions. The first is that foreign powers can with relative ease create states in occupied territories. State-building from afar is, of course, not impossible: most postcolonial societies inherited their states from the colonial period. But these proto-states took decades to build and even then were pretty shitty. Africa’s many weak states attest to this postcolonial legacy.
Northern Ireland is often cited by many as a “successful” counterinsurgency, but its state-building process was an incredibly difficult and slow affair. Despite hundreds of years of colonizing the island, the British government was largely unable to build a functioning state after 1973, when the Stormont parliament was abolished (though it had effectively ceased to function in 1969). Indeed, some argue that it wasn’t until the 2010 Hillsborough Castle Agreement that an actual government was finally established in the region.
Iraq — the new model for successful counterinsurgency — further illustrates the state-building problem. The government in Baghdad wasn’t so much built from scratch as reformed from the pre-invasion state, minus the army.
Afghanistan is no Iraq. Not only has the country never had a viable state historically, but the rumors of the Afghan state’s current existence have been grossly exaggerated. Dues to theweakness and corruption of Afghan security forces in particular, providing citizens a credible and secure alternative to insurgent rule is incredibly difficult. The Obama Administration is finally coming around to this reality, which they so charmingly refer to as “Afghan good enough.”
The second problem is that proponents of counterinsurgency assume that states have the unlimited resources required to implement it and that publics have the unlimited patience to see the plan out. This is generally an untenable assumption, especially for foreign occupiers. Much of counterinsurgency theory were formulated by colonial and neocolonial militaries: i.e. the British, the French, and the United States (first in the Philippines, later in Vietnam). And this is why counterinsurgencies tend to have historically been unsuccessful: the colonial states were unable, and their populations unwilling, to commit precious resources that counterinsurgents demanded and accept their indefinite time-frame for success.
Consider the situation in Afghanistan. The Obama Administration’s rethink of the whole adventure probably began when it became apparent that the current counterinsurgency strategy would take at least ten years and cost a trillion dollars to implement. Given theplummeting popularity of the war, such a commitment is thoroughly impossible.
The counterinsurgency crowd doesn’t seem to understand these basic realities: states are hard to make and the public isn’t willing to spend the time or money they demand to see their plans through. With Gen. Allen continuing to insist that he can build a viable Afghan state out of nothing more than abstract doctrine, it’s no wonder that he’s being consulted less on ending the war. But, like a good soldier, he’s apparently implementing the post-counterinsurgency plan on his way out
But, for all its problems, counterinsurgency puts a kind face on militarism, what with all its road-building and well-digging.
9 Comments
Its hard for Americans to understand how to “win” Afghanistan, because there is nothing to win. So really, we just don’t know when or how to quit. Kinda like smoking: an expensive indulgence you once thought was cool but turned out was a lethal and expensive trap thats hard to kick.
We’re just looking to “save face”; a sort of graceful exit that we can tell ourselves that “we did the best we could” and we may come back to visit later,.. so leave the light on.
IMHO the Ghan is modern Apache territory of a century and a half ago, but much more lethal weapons. Go to a Res today and they’re still pissed off at us whites, but we don’t call them insurgents, they’ve been pacified; but even after all this time we didn’t really “win their hearts and minds.”
It took 5,000 troops to get Geronimo’s 30-50 warriors to surrender. Do the math. We built the fort; so sign the damn document with pacified chief “Karzai” we’ve set up, and lets get out. But bring the hardware; Romney wants to use it in Venezuela.
I wonder if you might go into Edit and make some paragraph breaks, Phillip. It’s really hard for some eyes to read this way (mine, for instance, lol!).
In terms of situation, goals, tactics, politics, and outcome, I don’t see much difference between Afghanistan and Vietnam. Okay, no carpet bombing and no agent orange. But we are trying to suppress a hostile and very determined mostly rural population by imposing a corrupt self-serving unpopular secular regime. And, we have no comprehensible goal.
We lost in Vietnam and today we are no worse off than we’d be had we won. A war in which winning has no advantages over losing, it the peak of stupidity. And that’s where we are once again. The only thing we are fighting to save is the president’s face. We’re fighting to avoid losing.
Vietnam was a civil war between two developing countries artificially divided in 1954. Afghanistan was not in a state of civil war. Yes, there were warlord insurrections but not two states. Also, though poor and developing, Vietnam was and certainly now is far more developed as a political culture than Afghanistan was, is or likely ever will be. It is just a collection of warlike ethnic groups all of whom have homelands over the borders of Afghanistan: Uzbeks (Uzbekistan), Hazaris (Persians), Tajiks (Tajikistan) and Pashtuns (Pashtuns in the NW territories of Pakistan). So, the US’ task is far worse than in either Vietnam or Iraq and being there any longer than necessary to make an orderly withdrawal is a big waste of people’s lives and money, neither of which we can afford.
I can’t. Seriously, I’ve tried everything: double, triple space, even html — all to no avail. Sometimes, the magic editor comes along and does it for me.
The very word “counterinsurgency” is a term of propaganda. There are no “insurgents” violently opposing a legitimate government in this war; there are only native Afghan Muslims who come from the same clans and tribal communities dubbed “freedom fighters” and “the resistance” when the US armed them to fight the Soviets, and they are freedom fighters still, once again battling foreigners who have illegally invaded, bombed, and occupied their lands.
Obama is bankrolling a despised puppet government composed of drug traffickers, gangster warlords, and thieving criminal misogynists for reasons he will never publicly admit. I can’t wait until the US loses this war.
American counterinsurgency methods were spawned during the genocidal wars against the Native American. The tactics employed are based on sowing fear among the populace: destroying or limiting access to resources required for basic survival and severely disproportionate response to real, perceived, or invented hostile actions by the population. These tactics were refined during the 20th Century during the occupation of Germany from the mid 40′s to early 50′s, and of course most famously during the Vietnam war from the late 50′s to the mid 70′s. What is going on across the globe, but most specifically in Afghanistan and Iraq (and Libya and Syria…ad nauseum) is nothing new.
If we behaved any differently, I would be shocked.
I never considered the “Indian Wars” in the history of American counterinsurgency though, but you’re absolutely right. Co-opting leaders, forced relocation, imposition of governance structures. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a direct link between the tactics used against Native Americans and those implemented in the Philippines. Of course, this historical thread would likely have been developed through institutions like West Point.
Indeed. As cliche as it sounds, Adolf Hitler wrote at length about his admiration of American tactics against the indigenous population. I hate even bringing him up, but here it is quite apropo. These tactics are not pushed at West Point, but at the Army War College, where the general staff are trained in the finer points of dehumanizing the enemy. I, unfortunately, spent several years studying this shit as a Green Beret during the late Eighties and early Nineties.