Update: Command Post Episode Two: "Is Counter-Insurgency Dead?" may be of interest to our community.
Update 2: Time Partners with CNAS, But is it Good for Journalism? By Allen McDuffee at The Washington Post's ThinkTanked blog.
Comments
Publius said:
"It is clear that the Taliban is CNAS's enemy ..."
And this would seem pretty easy to understand. If one considers that:
(1) CNAS's overall goal is to "open up," transform and incorporate outlier states and societies -- so that these might cause the modern world less problems and, instead, offer the modern world more utility.
And,
(2) It is unlikely that this CNAS objective can be achieved if the Taliban in Afghanistan -- and/or others of its traditionalist/revisionist ilk elsewhere in the less-modern/less-integrated world -- should be allowed to achieve, regain or retain a significant governance role.
ADTS:
you are right, if intellectualism was the premise to the show, then there are multiple options to provide dissenting views like seeking out universities and their students and teachers. My quip was cast simply in the current framework of the show with the idea that at least one competing view from a different think tank might make it a bit better.
As to Nagl's book you are right in that the author needs to develop self criticism, and it should not be hard for him since his book has been thoroughly broken into bits by numerous scholarly historians (Birtle, Hack, e.g.,) to show its deep structural and methodological flaws. Yet I have not come across by John Nagl even one response in a journal or magazine to these critiques.
Publius's last sentence about think tanks and the desire for perpetual war, is, I think, chillingly correct.
gian
I didn't catch the TV shows. But with respect to Gian Gentile's ideas of competing think tanks - well, think tanks have been dubbed "universities without students," if I'm not mistaken. Why not scour the ranks of those at universities *with* students, including (and perhaps limited to only?) those outside the Beltway, in order to get a wider and more diverse and varied set of views?
ADTS
Agree largely with the above, but re this:
<i>That is what FID is all about, after all.</i>
I think we're seeing once again that SFA/FID/COIN in a post-regime change environment are fundamentally different than SFA/FID/COIN in support of a pre-existing allied government that's under threat, so different that they probably shouldn't be called the same thing. We can't pretend that this is a "partner government" and we are simply supporting it. The government is our creation, an extension of our presence; its "legitimacy" (to the limited extent to which it has any) and its capacity to exist derive solely from us... and like it or not, we are heavily invested in its survival.
That's not meant as a suggestion that we need a whole new system of SFA/FID/COIN for post-regime change situations... more as a suggestion that regime change wasn't the brightest of ideas, and that it may not be something we want to repeat any time soon.
Well, I watched the second episode and was surprised, but not in a good way. Dr. Nagl stated that U.S. forces SUPPORTED by Afghan forces would continue to do the 'clearing, holding and building' ie. counter-insurgency. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Why, at this point in the fight, are the Afghan forces doing the supporting? We'll never get out of there if that is the strategy. How did T.E. Lawrence put it? "Better for them (the Arabs) to do it imperfectly than for us (the Brits) to do it perfectly?"
In fairness, the CNAS folks did step back and state that the Afghans 'should' be doing the heavy lifting of the COIN effort. I'll go even further. Partner Nation (PN) forces are the ONLY people that can do counter-insurgency in Afghanistan. They speak the language, they share the same religion, etc... We (the U.S. and NATO/ISAF) can certainly help. That is what FID is all about, after all. And the DA hits that SOF does on a regular basis certainly buys you a little time with which to operate.
But expecting a bunch of Americans running around in 80 lbs of battle-rattle to 'do' counter-insurgency? Ain't going to work. The ANA and ANP will never grow or get better because we'll insist on doing it 'perfectly' ourselves. Then we'll suddenly leave and the whole thing falls apart.
Honestly, if the CNAS folks are still operating under the illusion that US forces can 'do' effective counter-insurgency in a place like A-stan, they need to just quit and get real jobs. No wonder things are falling apart over there this summer...
Pretty bizarre, if you ask me. I watched both segments and just shook my head. I'll disagree with some folks: Time is still capable of doing some fairly good reporting even if in-depth seems to escape them these days. Unfortunately, this was not Time's finest hour. Old-fashioned dude that I am, I'd kind of like to see the host--who's presumably paying the freight--have the expertise and interviewing skills to control the conversation. Time's man Thompson seemed to be there as only a backdrop for a CNAS commercial.
And then there is CNAS. Sorry, but if it ever had a time, this organization's time has passed. Three of their most prominent "analysts" and they just come across as dogmatic talking heads. Here we are just a couple of days after the SecDef and General Petraeus both gave us some pretty good news: Al Qaeda is on the run. Well, gee, why aren't the CNAS guys excited about that? In fact, if the words "Al Qaeda" ever passed the lips of the three CNAS people, I missed it. It was all "Taliban." It's clear the Taliban is CNAS's enemy, but it's also pretty clear that the Taliban was never much of an enemy of the U.S.'s. We all know the backstory, so I'll not belabor it, but reality is we spanked 'em for their poor choice of playmates and threw 'em out of power. Which of course pissed 'em off. Since then, with the sterling assistance of CNAS and other so-called "think tanks," we've wandered around Afghanistan with our heads in our asses trying to make gold from dross by trying to "defeat" an entity we've already defeated. When I say"defeated" I mean that we've graphically demonstrated to the Taliban that they'd chosen poorly in their friends. Had we withdrawn once we'd rubbed their noses in their poor choices, a lot of people think that the Taliban might have limited themselves to just being petty despots within their own borders.
But then we got COIN. Convincing the Taliban that they should drop Al Qaeda from their Rolodex and instead just focus on making life miserable for Afghanis just wasn't good enough for a whole lot of people, some of whom became very influential as the years rolled on. CNAS was one of these organizations. Awash in glib, self-confident young academics long on degrees and short on military experience, the think tanks became instant experts for naive and, let's face it, downright stupid politicians. And the military was complicit in all of this. Military personnel moved from the military to the think tanks, a factor that provided credibility and access. The active military, at the same time, was pretty interested in anything that would provide long-term employment. Face it, if you never invaded Iraq at all, and limited yourself to robust intelligence and SOF actions in Afghanistan, what would the rest of the military be doing?
COIN bought the Army a few years respite from the severe cutbacks that are coming. Organizations such as CNAS were Godsends to the Army. Petraeus used CNAS, McChrystal used CNAS, Flynn used CNAS, and on it goes. A perfect wedding of self-interested parties. Anybody ever given any thought to just how weird it was that a theater commander would allow a bunch of so-called academics and former junior officers to write his future OPlan to present to the NCA? That the senior theater intelligence officer would actually impeach the intelligence operations that he himself was responsible for, and then do it in an unclassified form through a civilian organization?
This whole thing's been a setup from the get-go. The world never needed CNAS and it needs it even less now. Check the list of sponsors. CNAS is just part of "War, Inc.," which unfortunately means that we as the taxpayers who are ultimately paying the salaries of the CNAS people (who do you think funds those defense contractors?) should be extremely wary of everything CNAS says. Unless and until I hear a good argument to the contrary, based on its track record, I've concluded that CNAS's principal objective is a state of never-ending low level war on the part of the U.S., all under the guise of COIN and "nation-building."
Gian,
I think that is the only appropriate way to intelligently discuss COIN. I doubt that Time, like other left leaning media organizations would allow a fair debate, because somehow our COIN dogma is seen my opinion shapers as being something uniquely intellectual (although it has failed us to date). Like Chris P said it is a shame, Time was once a great magazine. Now it is a populist rag. Furthermore how can a think tank embrace one theory and way of looking at a problem? What's the say, "if everyone is thinking is a like, then no one is thinking", or something like that. Obviously if everyone in CNAS embraces the same view is it truly a think tank?
I first read John's book "Eating Soup with a Knife" before it was cool, (I borrowed from the Ft Lewis Library, because I wasn't about to pay over a $100.00 for it at the time). I e-mailed John and told him I enjoyed the book based on the primary topic which was learning organizations (he compared the U.S. and Brit Armies and how each adapted/learned based on their experiences in Vietnam and Malaya). I called and asked him to come speak to the SF Group about learning organizations (not COIN, because quite frankly most of our NCOs and Warrant Officers had much more education and experience with COIN than John did, but we wanted to become a better learning organization). Unfortunately due to calendar challenges on both ends we couldn't make it work. Even then I disagreed with comparing Vietnam and Malaya, one was strictly (or nearly so) an isolated insurgency with little hopes of succeeding (the Brits still performed well, not taking away any credit), while the other was what some call a hybred war with large conventional maneuver forces (on both sides), and externally sponsored insurgency, so to assume the U.S. should have responded the same as the Brits in Malaya clearly misses the point of being a learning organization. I think a better comparison (still far from perfect) would have been comparing the French and U.S. responses in Vietnam.
Fast forward to Afghanistan, John states the military leadership will have to decide on whether or not to pursue a CT or COIN strategy in Afghanistan, which is a terrible way to frame all the choices available once our national leadership actually agrees on the policy objectives. I think we have more than two choices, and neither CT or COIN are strategies.
Then the LTG (R) adds that the Afghanistan military will have to field more troops (compared the million troops that were fielded in Iraq to the 300k in Afghanistan) that are "willing" to fight to be successful, but beyond this simple description for success he doesn't suggest how that force can be sustained, or what changes need to be made that will generate within their ranks the will to fight. Iraq has a lot of oil, so they can fund a million man army, Afghanistan cannot, so when you try to come up with a plan to make it happen things get a lot more challenging.
The President of CNAS in my view must develop a greater level of self criticism of entrenched views and challenge his own views to effectively become a learning individual. He didn't ask to be designated a COIN expert, it was a series of chances and timing, but the fact is he is now considered an expert and has an influential voice in D.C. (and beyond), so please use that voice to force think tanks and policy makers to become learning organizations and adjust to reality instead of blindly embracing and pushing COIN dogma. I realize that isn't the way the game is played in D.C., but one can hope that crisis will lead to productive change.
To counter his point that COIN follows us, I think it would have more accurate to state that war and warfare will continue to follow us and we must be prepared to the extent possible to respond to a wide array of potential security challenges. However, when it comes to national defense, COIN is a war or an approach of choice. It doesn't follow us, we don't have an insurgency in our country. Instead we opt to engage in it, and doing so using FID methodology can work when conditions are right. Of course we should teach our leaders about COIN, CT, etc., and it was criminal we didn't prior to 9/11, but please take off the blinders, the world is bigger than COIN.
Future topics on cyber security, care of wounded vets, etc. look more promising.
Well for whatever it is worth, and probably not much, my advice to Time--if they of course they are interested in intellectualism and analytical rigor--would be to recast the show and combine two think tanks to do it; but two think tanks with competing views.
Why not combine CNAS and Cato Institute? Chris Prebles from Cato would certainly offer differing views, and they could build their guest lists based on recommendations from the two tanks. Maybe then it could resemble the old classics like Agronsky and Company.
As it sits now with me, since there appears at least in these first two episodes to be no competing views, the show is nothing more than a PR venue for CNAS.
gian
I hate to put it quite this way, but it appears to me that, as policy advocacy organization, CNAS has a rather sigificant framing problem. The fact that they themselves chose to title the second video "Is COIN dead ?" only affirms the underlying problem. When Nagl says that COIN 'hasn't lost interest in us" - that statement is on its face nonsensical. Is the Global War on Terrorism over, or isn't it ? Defending counterinsurgency as a tactic in opposition to counterterrorism just doesn't cut it. There are numerous operational situations when neither will achieve worthwile results, irrespective of the false idea that it saves American lives and is less antagonistic then the heavier forehand approach. The real backhand antithesis to counterinsurgency is the Reagan Doctrine, where you are the one going around sponsoring insurgents and calling 'em "freedom fighters". Arguments over tactics virtually always reflect deeper divisions over strategy and policy. What happens to these guys when the outlive their usefulness to the constituencies that have funded them up from nothing ? I just don't see them keeping pace with the likes of Brookings or CSIS or even AEI and Heritage, despite the "old boy" ties with key players in the administration. When all you have is a knife....you lose to the guy who brought a gun to the fight.
I see numerous ethical questions intruding from the craft of journalism. This has nothing to do with CNAS, where there are some really fine folks there.
It's rather a sad day for independent, objective reporting. It marks the demise of a once important publication, now struggling to define itself.
Goodbye, Time. The clock ran out on you.
LTG Barno was the principle architect who set us, and Afghanistan on the course to where it is today. He did not understand insurgency then, and he shows little indication that he has evolved much in his thinking since (as assessed by his actions and written and spoken words).
Similarly, Dr. Nagl has promoted a version of COIN that also is oddly disconnected from a sophisticated understanding of insurgency, or even a broad historical basis in COIN.
CNAS has served as organization with the ear of government to advise senior leaders in the Pentagon and the White House to take the path that we have taken. Is it any wonder that they now rally to defend that path??
Now is the time to find new voices or old voices, but certainly time to lend some from fresh perspectives to this team of current voices.
Insurgency in 2011 is little changed in nature than insurgency in any other era in the history of man. The information age we live in, however, is unprecedented in the history of man. The advent of gunpower, rifled muskets, machineguns, airplanes, etc did not change the essence of war, but certainly affected the tactics. Similarly advents in information technology over the centuries have changed the tactics and effectiveness of such popular quests for a liberty denined by governance commited to sustaining the status quo.
Yes, we need to understand how info tech affects tactics of insurgency, UW and COIN; and what it means to the nature and extent of interventions and foreign policy in general. But all of that must be considered upon a strong understanding of insurgency itself, and I for one have not seen much of that in CNAS products.
Bob
Absolutely nothing new here, I don't see this surviving unless they bring in some fresh ideas. If you watch any of the 24/7 news media/entertainment you heard the same ole stuff repeatedly. Really not sure there is much more to say about Afghanistan that hasn't already been said. If CNAS really wants to be on the cutting edge they need to transition the discuss beyond Afghanistan.
Well, the first video shows three CNAS folks and one TIME reporter talking about what happens when you pull out 25% of your combat forces in Afghanistan during the next 18 months. In a nutshell, they point out that the Taliban (and Al Quaida and the Pakistanis and the Iranians, etc, etc...) are just going to 'run out the clock' if they think Obama is really serious about declaring victory and getting the hell out of Dodge. Not much in the video besides that, only runs 6 minutes or so.
John Nagl doesn't seem very thrilled about the whole idea of drawing down in Afghanistan just because the President is getting impatient. In fact, he looks kind of pissed off during the entire video. LTG Barno seems more worried about the timing of the whole drawdown, with regards to the spring/summer fighting season in A-stan. Can't really see why Nora Bensahel was included, didn't add anything that Nagl or Barno couldn't have covered, guess they needed a real 'academic' to back up the two military guys or something. Of course, she is a 'military strategist and counter-insurgency expert', according to TIME magazine, so there ya go.
Not much of a policy roundtable, to be honest, I found my attention wandering quite a bit during the video. Probably wouldn't hurt to add some map overlays or some graphics to add some context to the discussion.
Overall, needs some work if they want people to tune in and watch. They should have new stuff every day, so we'll see how it goes.
I'll give both the benefit of a doubt -- not so far earned by either, but I'm charitable. We'll see.
However, my suspicion is this does not bode well and I feel vibrations of the touting of trying to play by the rules of others on their turf. All for most excellent 'reasons' and 'better' than has been done in other times of course...