Back to basics

There seems to be much confusion swirling around the Afghanistan strategy debate - which probably isn't helped by the fact that the arguments were well advanced long before the average person noticed there was one. Because of that, much of what's discussed is probably deep in the details and confusing, because of that what follows is an effort to return to the very basics. There are complexities layered above the simple foundation described below, and this is not to be seen as any claim that all that complexity is pointless (though some is). But even though no decision should be based on the simplest points, no argument of the complexities should be resolved without full awareness of them.

Onward, then.

Gates Doubts U.S.'s Afghan Strategy . Proof: "...a senior defense official said that Defense Secretary Robert Gates now worries that counterinsurgency might no longer be a viable approach for countering the Taliban violence roiling once-stable parts of north and west Afghanistan." Proof that someone at the Wall Street Journal knows how to write an eye-catching headline, that is.

New York Times headline from London: McChrystal Rejects Lower Afghan Aims.

General McChrystal was asked by a member of an audience that included retired military commanders and security specialists whether he would support an idea put forward by Mr. Biden to scale back the American military presence in Afghanistan to focus on tracking down the leaders of Al Qaeda, in place of the current broader effort now under way to defeat the Taliban.

"The short answer is: no," he said. "You have to navigate from where you are, not where you wish to be. A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy."

"General McChrystal has been reported to be seeking as many as 40,000 additional American troops for the war..." we are reminded. London is probably about as close to D.C. as the General can safely be at this time - here's why.

Elsewhere in the New York Times, this helpful headline: Several Afghan Strategies, None a Clear Choice.

And like all good headlines that's partly true. We get to "choose" strategies to a point. Obviously, should some nation launch its nuclear stockpile at us we won't be considering counterinsurgency as response during flight time. Should North Korea send a few divisions of conventional forces south of the 38th parallel we'll meet that with infantry, armor, and airpower.

That said, in Afghanistan we are confronted with an insurgency (among other things) - or something close enough to it that arguments to the contrary amount to academic and semantic points. (There are people who delight in that.) We didn't go to Afghanistan to fight an insurgency, but if we stay there we will continue to be confronted with one. We can decide to leave, but if we stay there and fight that insurgency we will be conducting counterinsurgency - regardless of what we choose to call it. We don't get to vote on that - the insurgency does, and like ICBMs in the air or southbound tanks in the DMZ they are hard to ignore. Military doctrine can be established by the DoD (or component), decisions on what campaign (or operational-level) strategy and military tactics we use are best left to the appropriate combat commander*. Any of those will require adjustments to changing circumstances in order to be effective, but to a degree the overall "strategy" is what it is in as much as it's the enemy's choice.

But insurgencies require military and civilian efforts to counter. Proportions of their contributions are variable with place and time - you won't find men in business suits going door to door in the middle of a gunfight explaining plans for scheduled trash pickup to the neighbors. But someone, somewhere needs to be planning and prioritizing for that and a host of other problems somewhere else while that gunfight is ongoing. It would be nice if that someone had some experience at that sort of thing, but among other problems we face in places where we've overthrown oppressive dictatorships lately is that the start-up governments that replace them are start-ups. This is where outside civilian involvement can help, but generally we seem to fall short in that. The one thing we do seem to have no shortage of is people available to identify problems and expose corruption (look at all this trash in the street! No wonder they're shooting! Didn't we pay someone for this...?), but the Department of Prevention and Correction is woefully ever understaffed**.

But there's another consideration that "complicates" the strategy issue in the current discussions. Afghanistan is one part of what we used to call the Global War on Terror, which - regardless of what we call it - is a counterterror operation. Like counterinsurgency this requires a concerted civ/mil effort - with international law enforcement, financial, intel, and other components working to one common goal. In fact, the desired military contribution is smaller percentage-wise than in counterinsurgency, and consists primarily of shared intel, quick Special Ops-type missions, and air strikes. In Afghanistan in 2001 we went a step beyond that and brought a much bigger hammer down. Eight years on, the debate over whether that (or our subsequent decision to stick around) furthered our overall efforts or not remains unresolved - but counterterror operations (based there and elsewhere) are ongoing. There is no significant debate on whether or not to continue those efforts.

But we are eight years on. And there is debate on Afghanistan. And the first and foremost question asked must be do we stay in Afghanistan or not. But the question must be asked as "is it in the national interest of the United States to stay in Afghanistan?"

If the answer is yes the discussion of strategy used there is moot.

Or stupid.

Choose one.

* "...tactics we use are best left to the appropriate combat commander..." - who also determines resource requirements to execute that strategy - but those requirements are filled or not based on availability and the decisions of others. They can respond with no or yes (or "worth it" or not - but it's never that simple, of course) for a wide variety of reasons - but they can't correctly say he's got the wrong strategy.

**Training the host nation to take over so we can leave (or draw down) is indeed another aspect of our Afghan strategy. If we don't withdraw we're very likely to see that function merged even more than it currently is with our counterinsurgency operations. The result - on the military side - can actually be given a name other than "counterinsurgency" - but that's a topic for a future post.

Previously: A beginner's guide to time (and other news)

Useful documents:

General McChrystal's Commander's Initial Assessment

The Obama administration's White Paper on U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan