General Krulak appears unsure as to whether al-Qaeda and the Taliban are our enemies, and whether the United States has an interest in preventing Taliban control of Afghanistan. Exactly eight years ago today, al-Qaeda operatives supported by the Taliban-controlled government of Afghanistan murdered 3,000 Americans on American soil. The answer to the general's question is yes - al-Qaeda and the Taliban are America's enemies.
General Krulak advocates the use of 'hunter-killer teams' backed by airpower governed by minimal rules of engagement to 'take out the bad guys.' This light footprint tactic has failed for the last eight years. Aircraft operating with few or no ground forces cannot distinguish between insurgents and innocent civilians. Minimal rules of engagement result in maximum civilian casualties, tacitly assisting our enemies as they seek sanctuary and support from civilian populations.
General Krulak misrepresents the manpower requirements necessary for success in Afghanistan. Most of the troops required to provide security for the Afghan people can and will come from the Afghans themselves. Indeed, the most important task for American military forces is to strengthen the capabilities of Afghan security forces to accomplish this task.
General Krulak speculates that the American people would not provide the resources necessary to prevail in Afghanistan. While every citizen is entitled to his or her opinion, it's not clear that General Krulak has any particular expertise in the area of domestic American political opinion.
What's more certain is that the American people and their elected representatives have provided virtually everything asked of them by our military leaders. If there are insufficient resources to prevail in Afghanistan, it is the responsibility of senior military officers and other leaders within the executive branch to ask for more. It is dismaying that a retired general officer would advocate abandoning the war in Afghanistan out of concern for its impact on military personnel or equipment. We must tailor our forces to meet the demands of our wars, rather than vice versa.
After eight years of war, we have learned some hard lessons in Iraq and Afghanistan, including:
* Al-Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates pose a serious threat to the security of the United States, our people and our allies* Airpower and special operations forces are a necessary part of any counter-terrorism operation, but in and of themselves are insufficient to deny sanctuary to terrorist organizations.
* Developing host-nation security forces is an essential component of counterinsurgency operations. These forces are more credible, more enduring and more cost-effective than relying exclusively or primarily on U.S. forces.
* It is the responsibility of general officers to ask for the resources necessary to win our wars.
I respect General Krulak for his decades of service to our country. However, I was dismayed that any officer, active or retired, could still hold the views attributed to him on September 11, 2009.
Comments
Hi Mark:
Was airland battle from the 1980s a strategy? I dont know how one could argue that it was, and with that logic, therefore, how can you argue that population centric counterinsurgency is a strategy?
Sorry Mark, I fundamentally disagree with the notion that Coin is Strategy. In fact I find that term to be oxymoronic, a basic contradiction of terms.
But if one does believe that Population Centric Coin is Strategy then of course the way ahead in Astan is predetermined, more of what we are doing now and trying harder. When we accept this flawed notion that Coin is Strategy then Coin actually becomes a sort of end state, devoid of policy. The process itself therefore becomes all important and the overriding objective. And once the process itself becomes all important and believed in, any questioning of it or the posing of alternatives is seen as radical and threatening.
It was the critique of the American Army in the 1980s and 90s that it was consumed with the tactics and operations of air land battle that it forgot about strategy and more importantly the political nature of war. Ironically Coin has replaced airland battle in eclipsing strategy and policy from war.
gian
I think all of us should read Col. Yingling's post and think long and hard about the implications of this sort of argument coming from someone reputed to be one of the best minds in the Army today. I'd argue it is perhaps the starkest example that independent thought and critical analysis has been so marginalized that transparently empty cliches can pass for genuine insight.
al Qaeda and the Taliban are our enemies. Sure. So what? Where in that statement is any assessment of the threats they pose, the capabilities they wield, or range of potential options to deal with them? We have many enemies. Most of them we rightly ignore as irrelevant and insignificant. Calling someone our enemy -- in addition to be so shallow as to be embarrassing -- carries with it no implication of the correct response. Yes, eight years ago, 19 men -- most of whom received some small weapons and explosives training in Afghanistan -- launched a terrorist attack. How in the world does that -- in itself -- serve as a conclusive case for a decade of military operations?
Yingling writes, "This light footprint tactic has failed for the last eight years." Really? I must have missed the significant terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11. If the reason we must wage war indefinitely in Afghanistan is 9/11, and if there have been no such attacks since, then it is clear that what we are doing is either working or unnecessary.
Yingling writes, "We must tailor our forces to meet the demands of our wars, rather than vice versa." NO. We must tailor our forces to the demands of national security and national strategy. War is a political act.
There are a few minor interesting insights in this piece, buried in a morass of cliches and unexamined assumptions.
Col. Yingling may be dismayed that any officer could hold the views of Gen. Krulak. I am dismayed that a thinker of Yingling's caliber could produce such an ill-considered parroting of what passes for conventional wisdom.
Hi again Gian
Quote.Your statement to me to stop banging the anti-coin drum and get on board so that we can "win the fight we are in" betrays again the deep seated consumption with tactics and operations that afflicts our Army. That is exactly my point, if I follow your advice then we proceed business as usual down the nation-building road in Afghanistan, which as General Krulak's letter shows, is not demanded by good strategy, in fact good strategy demands something very different.Unquote.
I said nothing of the sort. Don't make the mistake of trying to box my view into being the same the half baked tactically focussed 'COIN' experts running around in the beltway, blogosphere and JROTC everywhere at the moment.
Winning the fight we are in is about strategy. If you think that the BS about roads etc and any other tactical blandishment is lame, then I agree with you fully.
However, one cannot disavow that a COIN war requires COIN strategy.
A real insurgency is truly a societal war. Such a level of conflict engages the political / military strategic level of action and hence is the realm of 'strategy'. COIN is not a tactic - it is a strategy. Insurgency aims at the change or fall of nation states. Tactics suggests the 'ways' of such a conflict, but only strategy aligns these with the means and ends.
Quote. So why when we currently talk strategy in Afghanistan we seem to always drop down to statements of population centric coin tactics and methods? unquote.
Simple really: two answers. First, after five years PhD research I am of the opinion that true COIN 'experts' (horrible term) are far rarer than this site, the popular media, the blogosphere, book launches and any number of beltway think tanks promoting 'experts' would have you believe. Secondly, most people have an understanding of COIN that is even less than FM 3-24 deep - a low bar and hardly on to aspire to if claiming any credible degree of 'expertise'.
Quote. I believe that I could write a short paragraph that would construct a strategy for our current operational approach of population centric coin today in Astan today that has coherence and logic. But it would involve terms like generational struggle, exhaustion of the enemy's will, acceptance for an extended period of lacking of the initiative, and a requirement to higher headquarters to provide much more resources for the many years ahead. Unquote.
Now that is getting close to useful. Why not keep it up?
Best,
Mark
How is a "strategy of hunter killer teams" more of a strategy than what we have now? Even if one rejects the current campaign plan as too unrealistic, costly, not focused on the right enemy, etc., the proposed alternative seems equally implausible as a coherent means of addressing the challenge--but that seems to be the only thing Krulak, Gentile, Will, Bacevich and other critics of the current plan can devise. If anything is a tactic rather than a strategy, that's it. It doesn't even address the valid criticisms that Krulak brings up in his email (our response to the war of ideas is...hunter-killer teams?).
I think both of you are correct, and the theme of your arguments necessary to success. But I don't think either of you articulate arguments that are sufficient for success.
States are (or should be) civilian enterprises. The skill-sets and, equally importantly but much less overtly, the attitudes and aptitudes required for successful state-building are not routinely taught, trained, or rewarded in the military. So they, by-and-large, aren't there. This isn't a criticism, but rather an observation; many of the attributes required for successful state-building assistance don't lend themselves to being taught or trained. A colleague from Juilliard once commented "You can teach music, but you have to learn maestro on your own." And yes, I truly think the nuances of state-assistance (or, as M4 and the USEMB crowd say "contested state building") are so subtle and contextually defined that they approach the "artsy" end of the art-science continuum.
What I think both of your arguments miss regarding our current engagement is that it has to be civilian-led. The composition, pace, content, and metrics won't be pleasing to the military eye. And what military observers and ORSAs will see as chaos or lack-of-progress should, in fact, be the natural processes proceeding at their natural pace.
I sometimes use an illustration from agriculture to make my point. Farmers have learned how to maximize the efficiency of growing corn. This is a fairly straight-forward enterprise, involving machination and regimentation; resulting in a timely crop which is also harvested in precise and predictable ways. Growing hardwood trees for market, on the other hand, isnt so straight-forward. It takes years - decades even - to see results. And theres no direct (or at least immediately observable) correlation between efforts to improve the crop and results. Because of the scale of an arbor, the number of intervening variables is much greater, and the requirements for success much more subtle, complicated, and uncertain. But, in both the case of both the corn and the hardwood crops, lack of visible activity doesnt mean that nothing is happening. It just means that nature is taking its course. And, in the case of the trees, growth (progress) is just too slow to be measured on a daily or even monthly basis.
When it comes to state-building, were really managing an arbor, but we think like were growing corn, and our expectations are predicated upon the "knee-high by July" seasonal expectations of corn-farming. So that, when the acorns of governance have been planted, but yield no saplings within the expected period of time we try and force things unnaturally. More fertilizer: And, if that doesnt work still more. Then different: and if that doesnt work more acorns. Then we fire the arborist and replace her with three new arborists and a dozen highly-paid experts on hardwood trees. Then we double the amount of water we provide; this despite the best advice available from our experts(who are by now in deep conflict with each other over how to proceed and whose fault failure is or will be). Our lack of strategic patience and understanding of the tasks we are about lead us to do tactical and operational things correctly, but in service of the wrong (or the absence of ) strategy. Fertilizer properly applied wont help if its the wrong kind, the wrong season, or the third application this week by different arborists who arent coordinating their efforts. The most expensive sprinkler system in the world wont help our trees grow if different managers keep tinkering with the timing system, so that were providing too much water on some days, and not enough on others.
Im enormously grateful to SWJ for the venue they provide for discussion of these important issues. But still sometimes dismayed by the 'military myopia with respect to how we see the problems. Until the "hard lessons" and discussions of "strategy" don't just include civilians, but feature them prominently and recognize the primacy of the civilian roles, mindsets, and skillsets, well continue to be thwarted by Zeno's paradox; we'll get better and better, but never achieve succeed.
I remember. 11 September 20009
Gen. Krulak's comments go a long way in perfecting that strategy of hunter-killer teams utility but the "will at home" has become so politicized and bogged down by ineffective armchair warriers that it will fall by the wayside. At the same time, guerilla tactics have changed to the extent that they now attack civilians (i.e. soft targets having nothing to do with the conflict)regardless of urban/rural population density that this hampers an effective anti-guerilla campaign.
In Iraq, the anti-government forces (whether al Qaeda, Sunni extremists, etc) raison d'etre is to use civilians as shields and this will continuously degrade any active response and moreso will prevent punitive strikes thereby giving power to the terrorists in the court of world opinion.
"We live in an age of newly empowered populaces and non-state organizations; all approaches to US national security must be balanced for both their deterrent, as well as provocative effects across this full span. It is a new algebra, and one not yet fully recognized or appreciated by those who shape our policies, or write the plans to implement the same." Thank you.
Robert Jones has started the openning of security framing. Our world is transforming to an organism of complexity - Groups form antibodies, Set up globally permeating arteries for cell and nutrient transit, for passing diseases and fighting infections. Soldiers have become t-cells and we have yet to figure our how to prepare them as we inject them into a distant infection.
Our current debate may be one more in likeness to a cancer therapist fighting a metastasize disease without first determining where the primary site sits and where the chemo, surgery or other action may have the greatest efficacy without the greatest collaterial and maybe even fratricidal dammage.
Time to reset.
Mark:
Population Centric Counterinsurgency is NOT a Strategy! It is a set of specified tactics and operational methods that are observable in practice and rhetoric. But you refer to it as such which has been exactly my point all along: That so many folks have become consumed with it, that they now believe by practicing it they are doing strategy; they are not.
Let me exlain a bit further by using history. Here is a simple historical example of grand strategy that makes a choice based on limited national resources and implicitly links that choice to policy: World War II and the American Grand Strategy of Germany First, Japan second, in priority.
Another historical example might be the British Strategy (I am using the latter evolution of that Strategy by early spring 1777) to defeat the colonists in 1777 and end the rebellion. It involved using four armies working on exterior lines to gain control of the Hudson/Champlain river system and the isolation of New England from the middle colonies combined with a major thrust by General Howe to seize the rebel capital of Philadelphia. The intended result would be the isolation of New England, if need be the possible destruction of the continental army, the gaining of more territory under British control and the psychological effect of making the rebels believe that they could not win the war thereby bringing about their submission to the King.
In the above example of the British note that there was no discussion as a matter of strategy of how to move operationally Burgoynes Army from Canada down to Albany, or how Clinton as he moved up from New York City would attack tactically the fortifications at Fort Montgomery along the Hudson.
So why when we currently talk strategy in Afghanistan we seem to always drop down to statements of population centric coin tactics and methods? How would it have sounded in july 1944 if Ike in giving strategic guidance would have talked only about how infantry squads should attack German 88 positions in the hedgerows?
I believe that I could write a short paragraph that would construct a strategy for our current operational approach of population centric coin today in Astan today that has coherence and logic. But it would involve terms like generational struggle, exhaustion of the enemy's will, acceptance for an extended period of lacking of the initiative, and a requirement to higher headquarters to provide much more resources for the many years ahead.
Your statement to me to stop banging the anti-coin drum and get on board so that we can "win the fight we are in" betrays again the deep seated consumption with tactics and operations that afflicts our Army. That is exactly my point, if I follow your advice then we proceed business as usual down the nation-building road in Afghanistan, which as General Krulak's letter shows, is not demanded by good strategy, in fact good strategy demands something very different.
thanks
gian
Quote Secretary Gates was right to be thankful for "radical Colonels and Special Forces...," perhaps it is time to find out what those guys are thinking instead of relying so heavily on the latest crop of Ph.D.s to step across the river from the think tanks to the Pentagon.Unquote.
Robert, I suspect that both these groups are the same people...
AN OPEN LETTER TO GIAN GENTILE
Dear Gian,
I believe that your reply to Paul Yingling's post makes an unproven claim with respect to your assertion that 'population centric COIN and nation building ' has effectively rendered the US Army General Corps incapable of Strategic thought.
A man of your education and experience knows that such a claim is fanciful at best, and at worst disingenuous. For instance, there are plenty of examples other than your 'population centric COIN and nation building' that would prove your claim about strategic ineptitude far better.... the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are two obvious examples.....
If anything, the decision of Generals such as Petraeus and Odierno to embrace the strategy (that you predictably deride in an increasingly shrill and repetitive fashion at every opportunity ) in order to reverse a failing strategy in Iraq mocks your claims.
I believe that your 'COIN will be our ruin' campaign is not the exemplar of'superior strategic thought' that I suspect you try to impress naifs and non-strategic thinkers with. My thought derives from the fact that the purpose of strategy is to achieve the desired ends of war.
Since the wars we have are insurgencies, and we desire victory, they require COIN approaches. Unless of course, that you think failure is a good option and that after an appopriate period of recrimination and self loathing you can then get back to the 'real wars' that are imagined around the future corner... Wait a minute, haven't we been there before too?
You are obviously a smart and dedicated officer. As a fellow military professional I would welcome the time that you stop banging the single issue zealot drum (and, too be fair, I acknowledge that there is quite a few COIN zealots doing exactly the same thing on their side..) and join the debate constructively about how to win the fights we have rather than hankering for the ones that you want or predict next.
best regards,
Mark O'Neill
I have to agree with Gian on this one. Paul misunderstands the nature of the conflict we are in, and has much good company, I fear.
General Krulak may not know what right looks like either, but he knows what wrong looks like, and his observations were fair ones.
Terms like "terrorist," "VEO," cause us to conflate very disparate groups by the tactics they employ rather than by their purpose for action.
Confused understanding of key concepts like "sanctuary," "Insurgency," "COIN," "UW," "ideology" lead us to a focus on specific threats and specific terrain that defies logic to a Special Forces strategist like myself.
The latest panacea belief that somehow "effectiveness of governance" is a cure to insurgency has no basis in historical fact and the pursuit of it will lead us toward strategic defeat nearly as fast as an excessive pursuit of "Defeat" of AQ and their many associates will.
We live in an age of newly empowered populaces and non-state organizations; all approaches to US national security must be balanced for both their deterrent, as well as provocative effects across this full span. It is a new algebra, and one not yet fully recognized or appreciated by those who shape our policies, or write the plans to implement the same.
Secretary Gates was right to be thankful for "radical Colonels and Special Forces...," perhaps it is time to find out what those guys are thinking instead of relying so heavily on the latest crop of Ph.D.s to step across the river from the think tanks to the Pentagon.
Paul:
Not me, not at all.
In fact I found General Krulak's letter to be a perfect exposition of the supreme dysfunction that we face now in the United States Army with the most critical level of war: Strategy.
Your disappointment with him also indicates to me the Army's continuing desire to mire itself in the tactics, methods, principles, and catechisms of population centric counterinsurgency. The implied message from your post calls for just trying harder at it, listening to the experts, giving up just a few more troops, and voila victory can be achieved, nation building at the barrel of an American gun can work in Afghanistan and "change its entire society." Your post also implies that This New Way of American Warfare can propel us righteously into the future if we just accept and embrace it and stop worrying about it.
I find it deeply ironic that you of all people, Paul, the author of that most important article of two years ago, "A Failure of Generalship" would find fault with one of our most ablest generals and to be sure one of the first on Afghanistan to finally start talking strategy and not the mind-numbing repetitions of the catechisms of nation building. I have been tempted to have a shot at writing a sequel to your important first essay, but this one would be titled "A Failure of Generalship Version 2: What Population Centric Counterinsurgency and Nation Building has done to the American Armys General Officer Corps and its Inability to do Strategy."
As you know Paul, it was not failure at tactics and operations that lost the war for us in Vietnam, but a failure at strategy. So too today do we walk down that same road with dysfunctional strategy in Afghanistan. General Krulak was taking a realistic view of our policy objectives in Afghanistan, he considered alternatives based on a realistic expectation of available resources, then applied a deep knowledge of military experience, and concluded that there are other and better ways to proceed in Afghanistan that still get at our interests there. Yet for once, when we finally have a general officer talking strategy, you chose instead to pummel him for apparently falling out of your cherished "gets it" club of General Officers.
If nothing else Paul, at least you might consider embracing the argument of this great marine General for stirring an important debate ON STRATEGY that is vitally needed.
gian