George Packer has conducted an interesting interview over at The New Yorker with David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency expert whom Packer has previous written about. Whatever you think about our presence in Afghanistan — I think it is a mistake, and counterproductive to our national security interests, among other sorts of interest — it’s well worth reading the interview carefully.
A key quote:
PACKER: So, on the military side, three additional brigades isn’t the answer? Or isn’t the only answer?
KILCULLEN: That’s right. The first thing we have to do is to “triage” the environment: figure out the smallest number of Afghan population centers that accounts for the greatest percentage of the population. Once we understand that lay-down (e.g., in the South, it’s two towns that account for eighty per cent of the population, but the east is more rural, so it’s a different calculation there), then we tailor a security plan for each major cluster of population, and for the key communications—roads, essentially—that link them together. Then we will have an idea of the extra troops we need, if any. But we can start right away with the troops we have.
Also, there are assets beyond (or, at a pinch, instead of) combat troops that would make a huge difference, without “breaking the bank” for combat troops elsewhere. These include construction engineers, aid and development personnel, aid project money, intelligence analysts, helicopters, trainers and advisers, mentors for local mayors and district officials, surveillance assets and so on—so it’s not necessarily a straight zero-sum between having combat troops pull out of Iraq so we can send them to Afghanistan. (In any case, if you accept the argument that a key part of our grand-strategic problem is that we are over-committed in Iraq—and I do accept that argument—then it makes no sense to pull troops out of Iraq just so we can go and re-commit them somewhere else. We need to be reducing overall force commitment everywhere, not just moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. That would be tantamount to un-bogging ourselves from Iraq just so we can re-bog ourselves in Afghanistan).
What we have here is a leading counterinsurgency expert saying that not only is our presence in Iraq counterproductive, but that adding brigades is not — necessarily — the answer to improving the lives of Afghani citizens and routing out the Taliban.
Read the whole interview. It’s quite interesting.
Reading the interview excerpt above reminds me what a fascinating time this is, in the sense that Barack Obama will soon take the reins of our whole national security strategy and will be in a position — I think, I hope — to implement totally new strategies and tactics based on clear thinking and fresh insight about what is going on. The fact that the whole world and the whole media are so focused on our economic problems — and the fact that the American public is so disillusioned about Bush’s Iraq War strategy — means that Obama won’t be under a lot of ideologically-based political pressure to do anything in particular.
To the extent Obama faces any political pressure, the pressure could come in the form of demands for Obama to keep his campaign promises to get Bin Laden — but I think the American people will forgive him if he doesn’t immediately accomplish what Bush couldn’t do in more than seven years.
But the key question is: What are our goals in Afghanistan? What are our national security interests there? Obama campaigned on the idea that Afghanistan/Pakistan (the distinction between them seems murky at times these days) is the central front on the War on Terror — which made me happy because it confronted the Bush assertion that Iraq is the central front. It could be that Obama put the focus on Afghanistan for political reasons, or it could be that Obama honestly beleves Afghanistan/Pakinstan is where those of concerned about America’s national security focus our attention.
So my question for Lee and anyone else is: Setting aside the sense that justice requires the elimination of Osama Bin Laden, do we have any serious national security objectives in Afghanistan/Pakistan? What would the risks be if we just withdraw and leave the country to its fate? And if we have objectives, how will we know when we have achieved them?
I’m reluctant to sign on to the idea that our “presence” in Afghanistan, broadly speaking, is counterproductive. Do you really believe we could just up and leave without any negative consequences for our national security?
Comment by Ian — November 15, 2008 @ 11:56 pm
Good comment, Ian. You ask, “Do you really believe we could just up and leave without any negative consequences for our national security?”
I guess the answer to your question is what you write in your previous paragraph: “Setting aside the sense that justice requires the elimination of Osama Bin Laden, do we have any serious national security objectives in Afghanistan/Pakistan? What would the risks be if we just withdraw and leave the country to its fate? And if we have objectives, how will we know when we have achieved them?”
Let us assume that our goal is to eliminate bin Laden. Do we believe that our presence in Afghanistan is going to help us achieve that aim? What do we get from a long-term occupation of that country? Do the Afghani people want us to stay in their country? More importantly, why do we think we have the right to occupy countries absent a clearly defined risk to our national security?
I have never understood what we thought we could acheive in Afghanistan. The 9/11 attacks were carried out by 19 educated Westernized extremists with box cutters who had money funnelled to them from Saudi Arabia and other sources. The al-Qaeda network is highly decentralized — and not really an organization in the ways we think of them — and won’t be eliminated even if we were to acheive everything we hope to achieve in Afghanistan.
All terrorists of this type need to do their worst is the desire to act, the opportunity, someone to train them, and a little money. More serious are the nuclear-minded terrorists who might emerge out of Pakistan and its ISI… but we haven’t invaded Pakistan, nor are we likely to anytime soon, nor should we.
Comment by Lee — November 16, 2008 @ 3:29 am
I think the hardest thing about selling the so-called War on Terror to the American public is that there will never be a day when we can say we have won. It is not like we are in a war against a particular country, where at the end the loser surrenders and reteats from the battlefield. In this War on Terror, that day will never come. Our enemy is not readily identifiable; they don’t ally themselves with a particular country. In my opinion this will be a non-stop war with no definite end. We will never be able to kill or capture all the terrorists. I am not sure what the best way to fight this war is. People clearly want to get out of Iraq, though I don’t beleive that is what the Iraqi’s want. If we decide tomorrow that we are leaving both Iraq and Afghanistan what will happen? I don’t think anyone can say for sure.
I think Obama needs to listen to his commanders in Iraq and find out what they truly believe can be accomplished by us staying there, and what would happen if we left.
Comment by rbates — November 16, 2008 @ 2:55 pm
rbates: I think you’re absolutely right in your characterization of the War on Terror. As it is defined now, it is unwinnable. It is, I believe, not really a war in the sense that we think about wars. It is more like a new type of criminal problem, one multinational in scale.
I think we need whole new ways of thinking of how to deal with these problems. I don’t think there are any ready or easy answers. Someone who is determined to do a lot of damage can… the best we can do is police our societies in a way to deter these sorts of attacks and decentralize risk.
The 7/7 attacks in London, for example, were I think entirely domestic in planning and execution.
(P.S., as for the opinion of Iraqis, I wrote about that in a previous blog posting here. The upshot: the majority of Iraqis want the U.S. out of their country, even it makes matters worse in the short run. I don’t know of any comparable public opinion polling in Afghanistan, though I suspect the terrain makes such polling very hard.
What that means in practical terms for how to leave the country is not clear, and I agree that the US president should listen to his commanders. Then again, I am a strong believer in the idea that it’s the civilian government that sets the goals, the military professionals tasked with executing those goals. What our goals should be is, ultimately, up to us.)
Comment by Lee — November 16, 2008 @ 5:07 pm
Lee, I agree with what you write. I don’t mean that The President should talk to his commanders and then do exactly as they say, but they can provide some very valuable insight as to what is really happening over there.
Do you think that Obama will follow through on his campaign promise to pull troops out of Iraq and redeploy them to Afghanistan?
Comment by rbates — November 16, 2008 @ 5:56 pm
It’s hard to predict these sorts of things. If he follows the advice of someone with views similar to Kilcullen, he is likely to slowly draw down from Iraq and perhaps add a brigade to Afghanistan, but largely focus on changing strategy in that country — and more generally the FATA region of Pakistan. What he does, I suspect, will be highly contingent on the facts on the ground. The key thing for him, from a political perspective, is to satisfy his supporters that he has done what they expected him to do. If, circa 2011/2012, people still feel as if is U.S. continues to be in Iraq, and there isn’t an explanation for why we haven’t yet withdrawn in a manner satisfactory to them, the political backlash against Obama could be enormous.
Comment by Lee — November 16, 2008 @ 6:32 pm
I think we will have some sort of presence in Iraq by the time the next election comes along with no fault to Obama. The two countries came to an agreement to keep US troops in Iraq until at least the end of 2011. We may not have the same presence then, as we do now, but nonetheless we will still be there. At least that’s my view.
Comment by rbates — November 16, 2008 @ 6:53 pm
If Obama is perceived to be successful in putting our national economy on the right track, then it’s hard to see that he’d suffer much politically from keeping troops in Iraq, given the direction in which things seem to be heading. Although violence continues in Iraq, things seem to be pretty much stable there, with U.S. casualties down to a trickle. I don’t mean to minimize the significance of the casualties that American soldiers still face in Iraq, but I really don’t think Obama should worry about “political backlash” as he considers what to do in Iraq.
To put it another way, I don’t think it’s effective for us to try to pursuade Obama to do anything in particular in Iraq or Afghanistan by threatening him with political retribution if he loses. First of all, it’s a bluff — how many anti-war activists are going to vote against Obama in a general election in 2004? Second of all, it contributes to the notion that Obama cares more about satisfying his political base than he cares about this country’s national security.
The question is: Is it in our national security interest to withdraw from Iraq? I absolutely believe that. And since Obama campaigned on that, we have absolutely no reason to believe that Obama won’t make it his top priority to withdraw from Iraq as quickly as possible. If we still have a small number of troops in Iraq in 2011, as rbates suggests, then we can evaluate the appropriateness of that situation then. But Obama hasn’t even taken office yet, so I think it’s a little early to start speculating about how he might mysteriously disappoint his anti-war base on Iraq.
When it comes to Afghanistan, I’ve heard smart people say that while Al Qaida is decentralized, there are a lot of them in the mountains along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. Obama himself said on 60 minutes the other night that getting Bin Laden is an important objective. I agree that it’s probably impossible to extinguish Al Qaida altogether — but my understanding is that Al Qaida remains a serious threat to this country, and the purpose of our presence in Afghanistan is, in large part, to weaken Al Qaida.
If we simply withdraw from Afghanistan, doesn’t that give Al Qaida freedom to grow stronger there and launch attacks?
The logic that says we are fightiing terrorism in Iraq didn’t hold up because the vast majority of Iraqis do not identify with the terrorists and regard Al Qaida as intruders or homegrown nutballs. But just because the logic didn’t apply in Iraq doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply in Afghanistan.
Lee, are you sure you aren’t being a little knee-jerk anti-war in your attitude towards Afghanistan. I agree that we shouldn’t massively increase our military footprint in Afghanistan — but would you really be disappointed if Obama added a brigade and then spent the next four years there? Are you sure that isn’t the wisest course of action? I want to press you on your assertion earlier that our presence there isn’t in our national security interests: Why do you believe that, when most Democrats seem to be saying that’s the thing to do?
(I’m not suggesting we should believe things just because they are said by Democrats — but we shouldn’t disagree with Democrats for poorly thought-out reasons either. So what’s your thinking on Afghanistan?)
Comment by Ian — November 17, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
I wanted to follow-up on my previous post after re-reading rbates’ comments on the nature of this war.
I agree that the most appropriate way to approach the war on terror is to regard the terrorists as criminal thugs, and to fight them the way law enforcement combats a criminal organization. This requires international cooperation among law enforcement agencies all over the world — which means it is in our interests to promote political stability in countries where terrorists exist. This line of thinking isn’t a real rationale for staying in Iraq because continued American military presence in that country wouldn’t lead the the sort of stability that would aid us in our anti-terrorism efforts. It’s better for us to leave (which is what the vast majority of Iraqi people want, even if it makes some of their politicians nervous). But Afghanistan is a different story — the problem isn’t that there will be “chaos” if we leave Afghanistan, the problem is that there is a high concentration of Al Qaida terrorists who will directly benefit from “chaos” there (whereas in Iraq “chaos” would mean that most of the terrorists would just get swallowed up in a civil war). It’s relevant, I think, that Afghanistan’s whole economy right now is dominated by the trade in poppy for narcotics — abandoning Afghanistan just seems like a bad idea to me. (It’s also relevant to point out that our rationale for invading Afghanistan had far more legitimacy in the eyes of the world — and our coalition is far more significant and durable. Why is Spain fighting in Afghanistan if the war there serves no purpose?)
I’m making the argument that we should stay in Afghanistan to create a stable government so we can work with that government to fight Al Qaida.
Comment by Ian — November 17, 2008 @ 11:50 pm