Blog Posts

Makeshift Bombs Spread Beyond Afghanistan, Iraq - Thom Shanker, New York Times.

American military officers are expressing concern over the spreading use of makeshift bombs beyond the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan to other countries in the region, as well as in East Asia and South America. Improvised explosive devices, as the military calls them, have been the largest killer of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, showing up with devastating effect in Pakistan and India, but also with less notice in Thailand, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Colombia, Somalia and parts of North Africa. Even Russian security forces have faced the devices in the republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan, although attacks in Chechnya have fallen.

"There is a robust and constant IED effort among violent extremists who are using it as their weapon of choice," said Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, director of the Pentagon's organization in charge of seeking ways to counter improvised explosives. "That won't change for decades. We are in this fight for a long time." General Metz, who will discuss the spread of improvised bombs during testimony on Thursday before a House Armed Services subcommittee, said global IED cases outside Iraq and Afghanistan averaged about 300 per month. The count includes detonations and the discovery of intact devices. The military's global statistics on the bombs remain classified, to prevent extremists from knowing what the United States knows. But a compilation of worldwide episodes from private-sector security consultants illustrates the threat...

More at The New York Times.

Obama Seeks Study on Local Leaders for Troop Decision - Scott Wilson and Greg Jaffe, Washington Post.

President Obama has asked senior officials for a province-by-province analysis of Afghanistan to determine which regions are being managed effectively by local leaders and which require international help, information that his advisers say will guide his decision on how many additional US troops to send to the battle. Obama made the request in a meeting Monday with Vice President Biden and a small group of senior advisers helping him decide whether to expand the war.

The detail he is now seeking also reflects the administration's turn toward Afghanistan's provincial governors, tribal leaders and local militias as potentially more effective partners in the effort than a historically weak central government that is confronting questions of legitimacy after the flawed Aug. 20 presidential election. "This is obviously a complicated security environment in Afghanistan, and the president wants the clearest possible understanding of what the challenges are to our forces and what is required to meet that challenge," said a senior administration official who has participated in the Afghanistan policy review and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it. "Any successful and sustainable strategy must clearly align the resources we provide with the goals we are trying to achieve." ...

More at The Washington Post.

My friend and CCISS colleague Tom Quiggan just wrote an excellent piece at GlobalBrief called

Take Your Sweet Time, Obama - Andrew Exum, The Daily Beast

President Obama is entering the final stages of his deliberations of Afghanistan. He's deciding whether to send more troops, or reframe U.S. policy to allow for something less than the counterinsurgency campaign he promised in March. As he ponders, it's hard not to feel a little sympathy for the commander in chief. He and his administration are trying to find a path to victory in a difficult war in Central Asia while at the same time navigating treacherous political terrain at home.

Popular support for the war has fallen rapidly over the last six months—the product, in part, of a near-decade of constant war that has left large portions of the American public drifting toward neo-isolationism. At the same time, the president is coming under pressure from political opponents and concerned moderates who worry Obama's caution is wasting a very short window of opportunity in which the United States can affect the situation in Afghanistan through the application of more resources to both train Afghan security forces and protect population centers targeted by insurgent groups in places like Khost and Kandahar. "Obama is dithering on Afghanistan" was the headline for the normally temperate Financial Times columnist Clive Crook Monday, and my colleague Tom Ricks, an Obama supporter and seasoned observer of military affairs, has expressed similar concern about the administration's decision-making process.

But there are two very good reasons why the Obama administration should take its time on its decision with respect to our Afghanistan policy. There are also reasons why both sides in the current debate should give the White House the time to do so...

More at The Daily Beast.

A Prescription for Tragedy in Afghanistan - Max Boot, Commentary

If media leaks are to be believed, President Obama will attempt to chart a middle way in Afghanistan, sending more soldiers but not as many as General Stanley McChrystal would like. The New York Times describes the emerging strategy as "McChrystal for the city, Biden for the country," a blend of the diametrically opposed approaches advocated by the general (who favors a counterinsurgency strategy) and the vice president (who wants to do counterterrorism operations only). The Times writes that "the administration is looking at protecting Kabul, Kandahar, Maza-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad and a few other village clusters, officials said." In the rest of Afghanistan, presumably, operations would be limited to a few air raids and Special Operations raids. Other media reports suggest that the administration is looking to send 10,000 to 20,000 troops -- not the 40,000 that McChrystal wants.

To Washington politicians, this no doubt sounds like a sensible compromise. To anyone steeped in military strategy it sounds as if it could be a prescription for tragedy. The administration seems intent on doing just enough to keep the war effort going without doing enough to win it. That is also what the U.S. did in Iraq from 2003 to 2007, and for that matter in Afghanistan from 2001 to today. The ambivalence of our politicians places US troops in harm's way without giving them a chance to prevail...

More at Commentary.

The great folks at the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center have launched their completely revamped Counterinsurgency Leaders Workshop, which runs through Thursday. They've lined up an impressive array of speakers for the event, including General James Mattis, reporter Trudy Rubin, and Major Ali Iqbar (Pakistani Army), among others.

The local FOX news affiliate covered the opening day of the conference, featuring comments by Canadian exchange officer and deputy director Lieutenant Colonel J.J. Malevich and branch chief Lieutenant Colonel "Storm" Savage, both of whom have recent Afghanistan experience.

 

While you're at it, the COIN Center Blog has taken an edgy move with some controversial posts, if you haven't visited it in awhile, check it out.

'Af-Pak Hands' Strives for Continuity in U.S. Mission

By John J. Kruzel

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27, 2009 -- The U.S. military is building a cadre of officers who each will serve a multi-year assignment dedicated to a narrow piece of the U.S. strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Known as "Af-Pak Hands," the program steeps officers in the language and culture of the region, and limits the range of their duties and focus on a single area for a four-to-five-year cycle. Officers will serve in a similar job at home and downrange, an aspect of the program military officials say will enable them to create and maintain relationships with the local populace abroad, a lynchpin of counterinsurgency doctrine.

"They'll be a group of experts that will learn to speak the local languages, understand the dialects, become attuned to the culture and remain focused on the problem for an extended period, rather than just on a rotation basis," a military official said, speaking on background.

In a normal rotation cycle, troops returning to the United States from deployment would likely occupy a different job from the one they held downrange. But the continuity of Af-Pak Hands would reduce the learning curve usually attendant to fresh boots on the ground, with officers building on their knowledge of local culture, language and tribal dynamics upon each of multiple, relatively short deployments.

"The idea is that you're not reinventing the wheel each time a new servicemember replaces an old one," another defense official speaking on background said of the program. The department has identified 300 billets that will comprise Af-Pak Hands personnel, including 121 new positions created as part of the initiative.

Continue on for more...

America's Best Leaders 2009 - U.S. News & World Report. Here's the full list and a slideshow - what follows are five of particular interest to our community of practice.

Senior Noncommissioned Officers, Military: These soldiers are taking on increasing levels of responsibility in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ray Odierno, U.S. General: The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq has been key in leading troops through harm's way.

Greg Mortenson, Philanthropist: Mortenson is furthering the cause of education, particularly for girls, in unstable countries.

Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator: Hatch works to pass bipartisan legislation without compromising his core principles.

Eboo Patel, Activist: Patel is the founder of a national movement promoting interfaith religious cooperation.

America's Best Leaders 2009 - U.S. News & World Report.

Todd Harrison, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, wonders whether the U.S. Department of Defense will need a financial bailout, for many of the same reasons General Motors needed one.

His essay (also posted at the Stimson Center's excellent blog on national security spending) lists the similarities. Like GM, the DoD has personnel costs, including generous fringe benefits, that are weighing down the budget and making it more difficult for the Pentagon to adapt to changing circumstances. Second, like GM, the Pentagon's lengthy and turf-protecting decision-making process has resulted in acquisition programs that have not adjusted to changing times. Third, the slump in the economy is going to limit the Pentagon's "revenues" just like it is limiting GM's.

Harrison recommends weapons acquisition policies that are less technologically ambitious. More controversially, he recommends less generous fringe benefits for servicemen, especially retirement pay.

Rather than cutting compensation, those looking for savings, flexibility, and a more nimble military should examine the option of rolling back the headcount increases since 2003 in the Army and Marine Corps. According to a Congressional Budget Office study (see page 7), reducing the Army's headcount by 65,000 active and 9,200 reserve would save over $90 billion over 10 years. F-22s and DDG-1000s are not the only things that cost a lot of money.

With unresolved commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, this sounds like a ridiculous idea. But the next leadership team at the Pentagon will face a very stressful budget challenge. The U.S. is facing asymmetric challenges on the high end (space systems, cyber, air and naval anti-access) and on the low end (terrorism, political subversion, global non-state challengers). Pentagon leaders will find themselves in the world after Iraq and Afghanistan, sooner I expect rather than later. What utility will the large general purpose ground forces built up for those wars have in the world after those wars?

Counterterrorism Gains - Michael Sheehan, Washington Times opinion.

In today's debates about how to proceed in Afghanistan, the relationship between counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism operations needs to be clearly understood. First and foremost, we should acknowledge that, in light of our original counter-terrorism goals, our Afghan and Pakistan policies have been remarkably effective. There is no need to panic. We invaded Afghanistan eight years ago to prevent another terrorist attack on our nation, and we have been successful. Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacked us three times in three years: at our African embassies in August 1998; the USS Cole incident in October 2000, and finally on our homeland on Sept. 11, 2001. In the eight years following Sept. 11, they have failed to attack us on our soil. In fact, al Qaeda can count only one terrorism attack in the entire West (London, 2005), with perhaps "partial credit" for another (Madrid, 2004).

This, by any standard, is a failure on the part of al Qaeda and a testament to the effectiveness of our worldwide counter-terrorism programs. And that success is a product of aggressive intelligence operations that reach from the mountains of Afghanistan, through foreign capitals around the world, and all the way to the streets of New York City. It has been no accident; the US military, the CIA, FBI, the New York Police Department, and others should be credited. However, in Afghanistan, we have continually moved the "goal posts" of our counter-terrorism success in the name of a counterinsurgency campaign. The initial objective of kicking out al Qaeda has now morphed into an ambitious program of "reinventing Afghanistan" as a modern state...

More at The Washington Times.

'NATO Has the Watches, We Have the Time' - James Shinn, Wall Street Journal opinion.

Those of us in the Bush administration who were responsible for its "Afghan Strategy Review" kept our mouths shut when we handed over the document to the Obama transition team last fall. We didn't want to box in the new administration. And when President Barack Obama and his advisers rolled out their own Afghanistan strategy on March 27, I was quietly pleased. It came to basically the same conclusion we had: The paramount goal was to squash terrorism through counterinsurgency and better governance in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs promised the press corps at the time that its strategy would be "fully resourced." Later, in August, Gen. Stanley McChrystal's assessment of the situation in Afghanistan was leaked. It was a road map to implement precisely the Obama strategy that was announced in March.

But one key element of both the Bush and Obama strategies is getting lost in the debate - that we must apply the military and economic resources for the time required to achieve our goals. As the Obama administration's March 27 White Paper notes, "There are no quick fixes to achieve US national security interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan." The average counterinsurgency war lasts a decade and a half; the successful British campaign in Malaya in the 1950s, for example, took 12 years. Even if Gen. McChrystal gets the 40,000 additional troops he has requested, there is unlikely to be short-term progress in meeting any of the security "metrics" that opponents of the war in Afghanistan will try to insert into the defense appropriations for carrying out the president's strategy...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

WASHINGTON, DC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 26, 2009

Contact: Frederick Jones, Communications Director, 202-224-4651

Chairman Kerry Delivers Speech on Afghanistan

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) delivered a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations' Washington, DC office today titled, "Afghanistan: Defining the Possibilities."

Continue on for Senator Kerry's remarks, as delivered...

One Tribe At A Time (A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan) by Major Jim Gant at Steven Pressfield's War and Reality in Afghanistan: It's The Tribes, Stupid!

I've been promising for several weeks to have a free downloadable .pdf of One Tribe At A Time. Finally it's here. My thanks to our readers for their patience. On a personal note, I must say that it gives me great pleasure to offer this document in full, not only because of my great respect for Maj. Jim Gant, who lived and breathed this Tribal Engagement idea for years, but for the piece itself and for the influence I hope it will have within the U.S. military and policymaking community.

One Tribe At A Time is not deathless prose. It's not a super-pro Beltway think tank piece. What it is, in my opinion, is an idea whose time has come, put forward by an officer who has lived it in the field with his Special Forces team members--and proved it can be done. And an officer, by the way, who is ready this instant to climb aboard a helicopter to go back to Afghanistan and do it again...

One Tribe At A Time

This is well worth the time to read all 45 pages. I strongly recommend it. MAJ Jim Gant, SF despite his extensive and demonstrated expertise in Afghanistan is being deployed on an Army requirement for a transition team back to Iraq (although he is not without previous experience in Iraq as he was previously on a transition team and was awarded a Silver Star for actions there). There is probably no better field grade officer for the "AFPAK Hands" program than Jim Gant (though he still needs to command a B Team and be a battalion S3/XO when he gets back from Iraq!)

This paper is an excellent example of the application of the Foreign Internal Defense concept of Remote Area Operations (not an exact application but certainly tailored for the tribal conditions that exist in Afghanistan):

Remote Area Operations. Remote area operations are operations undertaken in insurgent-controlled or contested areas to establish islands of popular support for the HN government and deny support to the insurgents. They differ from consolidation operations in that they are not designed to establish permanent HN government control over the area. Remote areas may be populated by ethnic, religious, or other isolated minority groups. They may be in the interior of the HN or near border areas where major infiltration routes exist. Remote area operations normally involve the use of specially trained paramilitary or irregular forces. SF teams support remote area operations to interdict insurgent activity, destroy insurgent base areas in the remote area, and demonstrate that the HN government has not conceded control to the insurgents. They also collect and report information concerning insurgent intentions in more populated areas. In this case, SF teams advise and assist irregular HN forces operating in a manner similar to the insurgents themselves, but with access to superior CS and CSS resources. (From FM 3-05.202 Foreign Internal Defense 2007.)

One Tribe At A Time

The Army You Have - Dexter Filkens, New York Times book review.

... It took a long time - Iraq imploded, and 32,000 Americans were killed or wounded - but the Army finally righted itself. The temporary buildup known as the surge may have helped stabilize the country, but what really pulled Iraq back from the abyss was that the Army fighting in the later years was vastly different from the one that went in at the start. The Army transformed itself in Iraq, and not a moment too soon.

The story of that transformation, and of the generals at the heart of it, is the subject of "The Fourth Star" by David Cloud, a correspondent at The New York Times from 2005 to 2007, and Greg Jaffe, the Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post. (Cloud and I met once while he worked at The Times, and we contributed to two articles together and shared a byline on a third.) This book is about four generals - David Petraeus and Peter Chiarelli, who led the transformation, and George W. Casey Jr. and John Abizaid, who were ultimately left behind by it. As "The Fourth Star" makes clear, it was only the efforts of Generals Petraeus and Chiarelli, and other like-minded officers, that saved America from a cataclysm in the Middle East.

"The Fourth Star" paints wonderfully dramatic portraits of the four senior officers highlighted here, but at its heart it's a story about bureaucracy. As an institution, the United States Army has much more in common with, say, a giant corporation like General Motors than with a professional sports team like the New York Giants. You can't cut players who don't perform, and it's hard to fire your head coach. Like General Motors, the Army changes very slowly, and once it does, it's hard to turn it around again...

More at The New York Times.

The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army - Greg Jaffe and David Cloud (Amazon.com)

US Tested 2 Afghan Scenarios in War Game - Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post.

The Pentagon's top military officer oversaw a secret war game this month to evaluate the two primary military options that have been put forward by the Pentagon and are being weighed by the Obama administration as part of a broad-based review of the faltering Afghanistan war, senior military officials said. The exercise, led by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, examined the likely outcome of inserting 44,000 more troops into the country to conduct a full-scale counterinsurgency effort aimed at building a stable Afghan government that can control most of the country. It also examined adding 10,000 to 15,000 more soldiers and Marines as part of an approach that the military has dubbed "counterterrorism plus." Both options were drawn from a detailed analysis prepared by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior commander in Afghanistan, and were forwarded to President Obama in recent weeks by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

The Pentagon war game did not formally endorse either course; rather, it tried to gauge how Taliban fighters, the Afghan and Pakistani governments and NATO allies might react to either of the scenarios. Mullen, a key player in the game, has discussed its conclusions with senior White House officials involved in the discussions over the new strategy. One of the exercise's key assumptions is that an increase of 10,000 to 15,000 troops would not in the near future give US commanders the forces they need to take back havens from the Taliban commanders in southern and western Afghanistan, where shadow insurgent governors collect taxes and run court systems based on Islamic sharia law...

More at The Washington Post.

War and Politics - Steve Coll, The New Yorker opinion.

Over the summer, the Afghan Taliban's military committee distributed "A Book of Rules," in Pashto, to its fighters. The book's eleven chapters seem to draw from the population-centric principles of F.M. 3-24, the U.S. Army's much publicized counter-insurgency field manual, released in 2006. Henceforth, the Taliban guide declares, suicide bombers must take "the utmost steps . . . to avoid civilian human loss." Commanders should generally insure the "safety and security of the civilian's life and property." Also, lest anxious Afghan parents get the wrong idea, Taliban guerrillas should avoid hanging around with beardless young boys and should particularly refrain from "keeping them in camps."

The manual might be risible if the Taliban's coercive insurgency were not so effective. Afghanistan's self-absorbed President, Hamid Karzai, might even consider leafing through it; if he could account for his citizenry's appetite for justice and security half as adaptively as his enemies do, Barack Obama would not be struggling so hard to locate the "good war" he pledged to win during his campaign for the White House.

Afghanistan's deterioration cannot be blamed on one man, and certainly not on Karzai. After the Taliban's fall, he was a symbol of national unity in a broken land—for several years, he was perhaps the only Afghan leader able to attract the simultaneous confidence of northern Tajik militias, southern Pashtun tribes, and international aid donors. The landslide he won in the 2004 election truly reflected his standing. Gradually, however, Karzai seemed to succumb to palace fever and corruption...

Much more at The New Yorker.

FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency

Taliban's A Book of Rules

Lies, Damn Lies and Counterinsurgency Benchmarks - Carlos Lozada, Washington Post opinion.

Whatever strategy President Obama chooses for Afghanistan, you can be sure that "benchmarks" or "metrics" will be a big part of the prime-time news conference. "Going forward, we will not blindly stay the course," Obama said in March, when he first reassessed the war. "Instead, we will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable."

So, how do we measure success in Afghanistan? If Obama opts for a narrow counterterrorism approach, the ultimate benchmark is simple: no terrorist attacks against the American homeland. But if he goes with the full McChrystal - a long-term, fully resourced counterinsurgency, with lots of new troops - the indicators of success become murkier.

Acknowledging that "using metrics in Afghanistan is more art than science," Brookings Institution scholars Jason Campbell, Michael E. O'Hanlon and Jeremy Shapiro map out the key indicators for a counterinsurgency war in the latest issue of Policy Review. In Iraq, they note, the most critical measures focused on violence and civilian deaths; in Afghanistan, "the most important metrics are those that gauge progress in the capacity and viability of the government." ...

More at The Washington Post.

How to Measure the War - Jason Campbell, Michael E. O'Hanlon and Jeremy Shapiro, Policy Review.

How to tell if a counterinsurgency campaign is being won? Sizing the force correctly for a stabilization mission is a key ingredient - and it has been the subject of much discussion in the modern American debate. But in fact, there is no exact formula for sizing forces. Even if there were, getting the numbers right would hardly ensure success. Troops might not perform optimally if poorly prepared for the mission; the security environment might pose too many daunting challenges for even properly sized and trained forces to contend with; indigenous forces might not be up to the job of gradually accepting primary responsibility for their country's security themselves; and the politics of the country in question might not evolve in a favorable direction due to the actions of internal or external spoilers. So to know if we are being successful, we must also track and study results on the ground.

In conventional warfare, identifying the momentum of battle is a fairly straightforward undertaking. Predicting ultimate outcomes is still very difficult, but determining who is "ahead" at a given moment is usually feasible. Movement of the frontlines, attrition rates, industrial production of war materiel, and logistical sustainability of forces in the field provide fairly obvious standards by which to assess trends. But counterinsurgency and stabilization operations - like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan - are different, and more complex. They also appear to be the future of warfare. How do we measure progress in such situations? ...

More at Policy Review.

Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) Afghanistan and some unmentioned strategic risks,

2) Gates finds frustration in Tokyo.

Afghanistan and some unmentioned strategic risks

Left unmentioned in all the discussion of America's interests in Afghanistan are several risks that Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for 40,000 additional soldiers, if implemented, would create. McChrystal is asking for a permanent escalation in Afghanistan which would commit U.S. ground forces to a larger open-ended effort. Gen. George Casey, the Army Chief of Staff, fears that the size and duration of this commitment could eventually break the all-volunteer Army. One strategic risk is that the United States would not have enough ready ground forces for another sustained contingency elsewhere. Finally, the funding that is diverted to sustaining ground-force intensive operations in Iraq and Afghanistan could be creating risks in the space, air, and naval dimensions that will unpleasantly appear in the next decade and beyond.

The Bush administration's "surge" in Iraq was a strategic gamble. The increase from 15 to 20 brigades in Iraq tapped out the last of America's ground combat power. In addition, the required deployment schedule -- 15 months in combat followed by 12 months back home -- was considered a temporary, emergency measure. It was for this reason that the Iraq "surge" was a temporary measure -- it was not feasible to indefinitely sustain 20 brigades in Iraq.

In these terms, McChrystal's troop request is not a "surge" but an escalation. McChrystal's initial assessment does not define a discrete time period during which he would need the additional troops -- the request is open-ended.

In May, prior to the Obama administration's latest review of Afghan policy and McChrystal's report, Casey declared the current deployment practice of "12 months deployed, 12 months home" unsustainable. The Army now considers a routine of 12 months deployed, 24 months home sustainable in the long run. The Army believes it can implement this routine if it limits its commitment to Afghanistan and Iraq to no more than 10 brigades.

But according to this open-source estimate of the current U.S. order of battle in Afghanistan, one Marine and six Army brigades are currently serving in Afghanistan. These seven brigades are part of the 68,000 U.S. troops in the country. McChrystal's 40,000-soldier increase would bring the U.S. brigade count in Afghanistan to at least 11 and probably more.

Click through to read more ...

On September 17th, President Obama scrapped the Bush administration's plans for missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. That day, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman General James Cartwright gave a briefing on the Obama administration's "stronger, smarter, and swifter" European missile defense program.

On September 17th I had both praise and some doubts for the new plan. I liked the shift to a distributed, flexible, and more mobile system. On the other hand, the plan seemed vague and incomplete and not very reassuring to allies in eastern Europe. In particular, I wondered where the X-band radar, previously slated for the Czech Republic and highly praised for its capabilities by General Cartwright, was going to end up. Without a convincing plan for missile defense sensors in Europe, it is hard to claim that there really is a missile defense plan for Europe.

It seems as if vagueness on the X-band radar and other sensors has turned into confusion and perhaps paralysis. In the end, Russian objections to high-powered missile defense radars, and the Obama administration's acquiescence to those objections, is for now gutting the administration's credibility on European missile defense. The Bush administration found out that its missile defense sensors would annoy the Russians but that annoyance would not stop the U.S. from having a missile defense system in Europe. The Obama team does not seem —to reach this same conclusion. Until it does, it does not really have a European missile defense plan.

Click through to read more ...

Embedded video from CNN Video

Fareed Zakaria's GPS: "Lessons of war in Afghanistan" - the battle at Wanat.

There's No Substitute for Troops on the Ground - Max Boot, New York Times opinion.

"I hope people who say this war is unwinnable see stories like this. This is what winning in a counterinsurgency looks like." Lt. Col. William F. McCollough, commander of the First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, is walking me around the center of Nawa, a poor, rural district in southern Afghanistan's strategically vital Helmand River Valley. His Marines, who now number more than 1,000, arrived in June to clear out the Taliban stronghold. Two weeks of hard fighting killed two Marines and wounded 70 more but drove out the insurgents. Since then the colonel's men, working with 400 Afghan soldiers and 100 policemen, have established a "security bubble" around Nawa. Colonel McCollough recalls that when they first arrived the bazaar was mostly shuttered and the streets empty. "This town was strangled by the Taliban," he says. "Anyone who was still here was beaten, taxed or intimidated."

Today, Nawa is flourishing. Seventy stores are open, according to the colonel, and the streets are full of trucks and pedestrians. Security is so good we were able to walk around without body armor - unthinkable in most of Helmand, the country's most dangerous province. The Marines are spending much of their time not in firefights but in clearing canals and building bridges and schools. On those rare occasions when the Taliban try to sneak back in to plant roadside bombs, the locals notify the Marines...

More at The New York Times.

Pakistan Fights Back - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

Until a few months ago, Pakistani officials often used the term "miscreants" when they described the Taliban fighters operating from the western tribal areas. This moniker conveyed the sense that the Taliban was a nuisance - a ragtag band of fanatics and gangsters who could be placated with peace deals - rather than a mortal threat to the nation. That state of denial appears to be over. This week's offensive against Taliban sanctuaries in South Waziristan is the latest sign that Pakistan has awakened to the seriousness of its domestic terrorism problem.

Here's how one of Pakistan's top military commanders put it to me, expressing sentiments that are widely shared among his colleagues: "We must win, if we want our children to be living a life of their choice and belief, and not of these beasts. I wish I could tell you how much I hate them. We want to get our beautiful and peaceful country back from their vicious clutches. We cannot allow them to destroy our future." Popular anger against the Taliban has been building this year. Back in April, the country seemed dazed and politically paralyzed. But as the Islamic extremists broke out of the Swat Valley that month and moved closer to the capital, something changed. The army launched an aggressive campaign in Swat, the Taliban fighters were pushed back and the public cheered...

More at The Washington Post.

Is There a Middle Way? - Stephen Biddle, The New Republic

General Stanley McChrystal's request to send more troops to Afghanistan has induced sticker shock for many Americans--including, apparently, President Obama. The integrated counterinsurgency, or COIN, strategy that McChrystal wants to pursue has many components: protecting Afghan civilians, rapidly expanding the Afghan army and police, reforming government, providing economic development assistance, weaning Taliban fighters and leaders away from Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, reconciling them into the new government, and targeting those who refuse. This makes it a demanding strategy that McChrystal reportedly believes will require providing at least an additional 10,000 to 40,000 U.S. troops and more than doubling existing Afghan forces to a total of 400,000 indigenous soldiers and police. (Full disclosure: I served as a member of General McChrystal's assessment team in June and July 2009, but I do not speak for his command, and the views expressed here are strictly my own.) This price tag has further galvanized opposition to a war whose support was already fading fast.

Few, however, actually want to leave Afghanistan outright. Instead, most pair their opposition to reinforcement with support for a middle way--a more limited presence intended to secure U.S. interests without the cost and risk of escalation. Opponents have proposed at least a half-dozen such "middle ways," ranging from greater reliance on drone-based counterterrorism strikes to early pursuit of a negotiated settlement to end the war. The specifics are often fuzzy; none has been articulated with the detail of McChrystal's proposal, particularly regarding troop requirements. But most are tantamount to splitting off a piece of McChrystal-style integrated COIN and executing it alone. Some critics propose pursuing pieces in combination, but none attempts the totality, and, especially, none includes McChrystal's large U.S. ground combat presence for protecting Afghan civilians. For all, the underlying idea is to reduce the cost of the war without abandoning the U.S. interest in denying Al Qaeda a base for attacking the West or destabilizing neighboring Pakistan.

It is easy to see why such middle ways are so popular. They could lighten the burden on the federal deficit. They could put fewer Americans in harm's way. They would seem to better fit the U.S. interests at stake, which are real but limited and indirect. They appeal to the centrism of many American voters. The problem is that they probably won't work.

The reasons vary from proposal to proposal, but the basic problem is that the pieces of COIN are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts; implementing just one or two pieces alone undermines their effectiveness. It might make sense to do less and accept a greater risk of failure, depending on one's tolerance for risk and cost. But there is no magic middle way between the McChrystal recommendation and total withdrawal that offers comparable odds at lower cost. In counterinsurgency, less is not more...

Much more at The New Republic.

Stephen Biddle is the Roger Hertog Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

CNAS Releases Afghanistan Policy Brief by Andrew Exum

After eight years of conflict and an ongoing policy review by the Obama Administration, the future of Afghanistan remains uncertain. Yet, as the latest assessment in Washington takes place amidst a contested Afghan national election, conditions on the ground continue to deteriorate. The brief, authored by CNAS Fellow and U.S. Afghanistan policy expert Andrew Exum, is meant to serve as a guide for strategic Afghanistan policy planning by laying out the worst, most likely, and best-case scenario for what the country might look like in 24 months, and how U.S. policy might make each scenario more or less likely. Although all three scenarios involve risks, an Afghanistan at peace with itself and its neighbors remains a possibility.

In the "worst-case" and most unlikely scenario, Afghanistan returns to pre-9/11 conditions where insurgent groups again gain control of the nation, reestablish an Islamic Emirate, and grant refuge to transnational terror groups. This inevitably leads to civil war and furthers regional instability. In the "most-likely" scenario, the Obama Administration cautiously transitions to a coordinated counterterrorism mission where allied engagement is limited to training Afghan National Security Forces, employing precision airpower and conducting direct-action special operations. Given similar attempts to execute a small footprint-type mission in Afghanistan, the likelihood of failure is high and eventually leads to a protracted proxy war between the United States and Pakistan. In the third and "best-case" scenario, the United States and its allies agree to a fully resourced campaign to provide security for key population centers and continue to develop effective security forces. By committing to a foundation for peace in Afghanistan, the United States and its allies achieve its main policy objective of regional stability.

Download the full Afghanistan Policy Brief (PDF)

Small Wars Journal has featured the U.S. Army's new Capstone Concept, the Army's top-level doctrine for how it will prepare for conflict over the next two decades. The Army Capstone Concept calls for full-spectrum capability. But it also emphasizes the need for "high touch" skills, the language, cultural, historical, population, and personal skills required to be effective in low-intensity and irregular warfare environments.

It seems as if Russia's military doctrine is going in exactly the opposite direction, if a recent article from Defense News is any indication. Some excerpts:

Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the powerful security council, said the conditions under which Russia could resort to atomic weapons are being reworked in the main strategy document and will be reviewed by President Dmitry Medvedev by the end of the year.

"The conditions have been revised for the use of nuclear weapons to rebuff an aggression with the use of conventional weapons, not only on a massive-scale but on a regional and even local level," Patrushev told the Izvestia newspaper.

"Variants are under considerations for the use of nuclear weapons depending on the situation and potential of a would-be aggressor," he said.

"In a critical situation for national security, a preventative nuclear strike on an aggressor is not ruled out."

One could call "a preventative nuclear strike on an aggressor" the Bush Doctrine on Steroids.

Russia is finding itself resorting to a nuclear-centered military doctrine because it is finding it more and more difficult to maintain adequate conventional military capabilities. 20 years ago Soviet conventional forces were massive and frightening -- it was the U.S. and NATO that required a large inventory of tactical nuclear weapons to deter the Soviet armored behemoth in eastern Europe. Today, the situation is reversed -- it is Russia that needs its remaining nuclear weapons to compensate for its conventional weakness.

Naturally, any country that has a declared or undeclared "no first use" policy can instantly drop that policy during a stressful moment. The problem with Russia's doctrine is that it is doctrine -- it is what Russia will plan for, prepare for, train for, and as a result, make more likely to occur.

President Obama (as did President Reagan) dreams of a world free of nuclear weapons. Strategically, no country would benefit more from this dream, at least at this moment in history, than the United States. That is the single most powerful reason why this dream will not come true.