The Independent Military

Tom Barnett flags what he calls the U.S. military’s growing “independence,” citing in this case Gen. David Petraeus’ penchant for shaping opinion (once again, the COIN emphasis on narrative): What I find interesting: the trip to Afghanistan is arranged byPetraeus, meaning he generates his own public policy proponents fromoutside the government. That tells you something about how independent our military hasbecome as a result of the Long War: they field their own when it comesto op-ed conflicts. . . . . . [I]t really marks this era’s American military as beingdifferent from other militaries, as well as different from previousAmerican […]

The Garrison Mentality in Afghanistan

Joshua Foust follows up on my “Afghanistan as Gated Community” remarks with a detailed post worth reading. Essentially, this time my literary deconstruction — typos and all — got closer to the mark. I’d like to take this opportunity to note that I’m aware of the limitations of what I can actually “know” about Afghanistan from reading open-source news and analysis from a distance. So there’s a real value of having someone in Foust’s position, there on the ground, who’s willing to weigh in on how close my impressions come to describing his experiences. Keeping in mind, too, that Foust’s […]

Afghanistan as NATO-Europe Faultline

Spencer Ackerman introduces us to the new SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe, otherwise known as NATO’s military commander), Adm. James Stavridis. It’s the first time a Naval officer has held the post. Note that the alliance, along with the rest of the world, is currently engaged in anti-piracy patrols off of Somalia. That also corresponds to a shift in strategic focus among Western general staffs towards the Indian Ocean and Asia as the most likely threat horizon, with an emphasis on naval rivalries. This is admittedly tea-leaf reading, but I wonder if this doesn’t represent Washington’s desire to reassert the […]

Poland to Increase Afghanistan Troops?

The Polish daily Gazeta (via Nicolas Gros-Verheyde) is reporting that Poland is planning to send 400 more troops to Afghanistan. That might seem like good news for an Obama administration that has been lowering its expectations for European troop increases. (And yes, any good news on European troop increases will number in the hundreds, not the thousands.) But the reason why the Poles are likely to send the reinforcements is cause for some concern: The 1,600 Polish troops in Ghazni province are in for an exceptionallystormy spring and summer. U.S. forces will be pushing the Taliban out ofthe Kabul region […]

Afghanistan and Iraq as Gated Communities

I’ve said this before, but the militarization of the Afghan economy doesn’t strike me as an effective way to pacify the place. This picture by Josh Foust (more here) of FOB Salerno in Khost Province, Afghanistan, got me thinking that essentially what we’re modelling in Iraq (the Green Zone) and Afghanistan is the most extreme version of the American gated community. But when a gated community is inhabited primarily by soldiers (yes, I’m exagerrating to make the point), it becomes a garrison. Apparently that’s what’s left of the nation-building approach.

The Literature of War

This is just a re-occuring, random thought that’s been bouncing around in my head for the past few weeks, but I thought I’d air it out: Is there something peculiar to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars that explains why the literature to emerge from them is almost exclusively non-fiction, whether war memoirs or war reporting? Or does that just reflect on the current state of the publishing industry? My hunch is that it’s both. Or to be more specific, it’s a reflection of the professionalization of the military. To be sure, there were plenty of war memoirs to come out […]

Oxymorons rarely work. Sure, people can’t get enough of jumbo shrimp. And there is a good reason why Shakespeare’s, “Parting is such sweet sorrow. . .” still resonates four centuries after it was penned. But on the whole, oxymorons tend to signal an inconsistency that is impossible to resolve. More and more, trends in American foreign policy reflect exactly this kind of incongruity. Take some of the concepts that have evolved over the past few years: warriors as diplomats, for instance, or soldiers as state-builders. Now, Afghanistan’s future, which will likely involve a “surge” of troops, places another seemingly discrepant […]

SLOPPY STAFF WORK — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton burst into raucous laughter when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointed out a translation error on the “Reset Button” she gave him as a joke gift. The joke was on her, however, and in private she was less good-natured about the sloppy staff work responsible for the error. For one thing, it started her off at something of a disadvantage, however slight, with her Russian counterpart. For another, it pointed up an unfavorable comparison with her predecessor: Russian-speaker Condi Rice would very probably have caught the error in time. Such snafus […]

Afghan Road Warrior

Joshua Foust decided to parse my use of literary criticism to deconstruct Afghan roads as an element of COIN strategy, and the result isn’t pretty: Here, though, Grunstein’s argument falls apart. There is preciouslittle evidence that a) “Afghans” have a homogenous identity; b) thecurrent “intrusion” by the outside world is any more significant orjarring than it was before 1979; or c) they actually dislike roads. Infact, of all the people I’ve spoken to the last two months—Pashtuns, noless—they want more, rather than fewer, roads. They see roads as the key to prosperity—a simplistic view, perhaps, but no less heartfelt. In […]

Were Afghans Born to Run?

Regarding yesterday’s post on Afghan roads, Joshua Foust pointed me in the direction of his Columbia Journalism Review article on the life and death of the “road-building” meme, which appeared last September. It focuses on the fallacy of equating road-building with security, but triggered an additional thought for me about the COIN emphasis on narrative. I’ve already written about the tension that can arise when a narrative meant for domestic consumption plays poorly in-theater, and vice versa. But the road-building meme Foust dissects illustrates the way in which COIN practitioners will inevitably tend to interpret the narrative they’re constructing in-theater […]

Afghan Roads

Remember that slew of articles not too long ago all about how building roads was an essential element of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, because in addition to providing better access for securing the population, roads also helped integrate farflung villages into the broader economy? That’s how COIN practitioners see roads anyhow. Here’s John McCreary on how Afghans see them: . . . Roads are a mixed blessing because they improve the efficiency of the taxation system as well as expand the market area. They also can be infrastructure for village improvement, but that is not the expected customary result. Roads usually […]

COIN: The Not-So-Good, the Bad and the Beautiful

Last week I mentioned that COIN offers a vision of war that is more intellectually satisfying and morally palatable. Today over at Small Wars Journal (.pdf), Jason Fritz takes that a step further and calls it more aethsetically pleasing — to its proponents. It’s an interesting framing of the COIN vs. Conventional debate, where the zealots on either extreme of the spectrum are actually blinded by the beauty of their ideal method of warfare. Here’s Fritz: . . . Multi-agency counterinsurgency doctrine provides a holistic governmentsolution for socio-political-economic problems. It is government at itsbest — various agencies working together to […]

China and the Afghanistan Regional Approach

The oddest thing about recent discussions of the “regional approach” to Afghanistan is that it systematically ignores the pink elephant in the room: China. So we hear about Af-Pak, with India referred to by its given name out of deference. But if you talk about Pakistan and India without talking about China, you’re leaving out a big part of the equation. To see why, check out the feature issue WPR ran on the region titled, The Asian Triangle, but especially the Arif Rafiq piece, Pakistan’s Search for Security (subscription required.) It just so happens that Chinese interests on Afghanistan and […]

KAPISA PROVINCE, Afghanistan — Over scalding cups of tea in mid-February, an elder in Nijrab, Afghanistan said to me, “For two years you have come here and asked me the same questions. I like you, I like the French, but you people never learn.” He was referring to the generic questions Westerners ask Afghans: What is your life like? Where is the Taliban? What are your village’s needs? This particular elder has regular contact with American troops, and likes Americans enough to have tea with us. Nevertheless, he was deeply frustrated by the way, for all our questions, we never […]

COIN’s Impact on Strategic Policy

If you’ve been following the “COIN will breed COIN” debate, check out these posts by Andrew Exum, Matthew Yglesias and Spencer Ackerman. If you haven’t, check them out anyway. It’s an interesting discussion of whether in makingCOIN a doctrinal focus of operations, the U.S. military will be tempted to intervene in counterinsurgencies of choice. It’s a subject I’ve written about often over the past 18 months. If anything has reassured me that my worries weren’t warranted, it’s been Secretary of Defense Bob Gates’ emphasis on “strategic balance.” Exum’s insistence that COIN practitioners are not necessarily COIN enthusiasts rings true, too. […]

Interest vs. Action

I think Matthew Yglesias is significantly underestimating the degree to which the “rapid increase in our level of interest in Pakistan’s troubles” has led to a rapid increase in our less-than-well-informed meddling in Pakistan’s affairs. It’s not the interest per se, but the actions it generates, that lead to a “rapid escalation in the scale of the troubles.” Other than that, Yglesias’ observation is on target. Pakistan’s problems pre-dated our interest in them, and will in all likelihood survive it, too.

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