It is impolite, but probably true, to say that when President Obama announced in March that he had a "comprehensive, new strategy" for victory in Afghanistan, he had no precise idea what he was talking about. In Washington parlance, the word "strategy" usually means "to-do list" or at best "action plan." As for "comprehensive" and "new," they usually mean merely "better than whatever my predecessors did." So now, even after his speech Tuesday night at West Point, does the president really have a strategy for the Afghan war? What is a strategy anyway, in a war without fronts, one that might drag on for decades and that shades off into banditry at one end and terrorism at another?
Strategy is the art of choice that binds means with objectives. It is the highest level of thinking about war, and it involves priorities (we will devote resources here, even if that means starving operations there), sequencing (we will do this first, then that) and a theory of victory (we will succeed for the following reasons). That is the job of wartime presidents; it's why they have the title commander in chief. Obama set out his objectives for Afghanistan, focused on thwarting al-Qaeda, and enumerated some of the means, chiefly a 30,000-troop, 18-month surge. But what about the hard part: setting priorities, establishing a sequencing and laying out a theory of victory? ...
More at The Washington Post.
Comments
Speaking of Whole of Government, readers of this conversation may find it interesting that at the State Department's Whole of Government Planning for Reconstruction and Stabilization Operations class, offered in December of this year in conjunction with NDU, and directed mainly to members of the civilian response corps, the article being discussed above was curtly banned from class discussion by the course professor, a BAH contractor even as we were discussing the very nature of the distinctions between planning and strategy. "Surely the last thing we need is Eliot Cohen's opinions on the new strategy, now do we?" said she.
The article offers no real insights but is, I believe, correct in its main premise. Washington just doesn't do Strategy...
That will likely not change due to domestic politics and that creates a problem which Professor Cohen neatly captures with this quite accurate statement:<blockquote>"Making COIN work in real time, therefore, requires the <b>right kinds of practitioners, vast patience and local knowledge of a kind that is difficult to build up and easily perishable in large organizations</b>. As Obama will discover, even setting the strategy seems easy by comparison." <i>(emphasis added / kw)</i></blockquote>The sooner we learn that the commitment of the GPF to such operations will in virtually all cases be counterproductive and ineffective as well as terribly inefficient, the better off we will be.
Better Intelligence (or, more correctly, perhaps 'better shared intelligence...'), better State Department action and the <b>early</b> use of Special Forces in their UW/IW role as opposed to being wasted on direct action is key. Most of the COIN fiascoes in the last 50 years could have been preempted easily by more aggressive action employing those three communities early on -- as has been proven by some smaller successes in the same period...
The message for DoD and the Army is that we need tools -- and people -- tailored for jobs. The '...one size fits all...' days are gone.
Ken, while I generally agree with your comments and analysis of Cohen's piece,I would add one point and disagree on another.
Cohen fails to discuss the need to really understand our allies - critical in COIN support/SFA/FID. Our local allies are not the same as our local adversaries or the local population, although they come from the same broad population group. Although this kind of obvious observation is inherent in FAO training and SF doctrine, it is not quite so obvious in our COIN doctrine - we pay lip service to T. E. Lawrence, butreally don't understand his observation.
I must disagree with you on the use of GPF - we simply do not have enough SF to fulfil the SFA role. Hence, we must make do with some GPF. While the GPF as a whole will never be as good at this as the SF some individuals and units will take to it and most can be trained to do relevant parts of the mission in a way that is "good enough." The Mosul Case that Rob Thornton drove and Marc Tyrrell and I assisted him on (with our two chapters) is a good example of what can be done and is posted in the Journal section of SWJ.
<b>John T. Fishel:</b>
I'm not sure we disagree.
I agree with your addition on truly understanding our allies. I further suggest that in all our less than successful COIN ventures to date, the capability to do that has been present in the form of knowledgeable FAOs (and others, certainly including FSOs) but the leadership has ignored them...
I may not have been clear in my 'disagreement' with the use of the GPF in the COIN role. In an attempt to clarify, let me restate and amplify my comments on that aspect:
"<i>The sooner we learn that the commitment of the GPF to such operations will in virtually all cases be counterproductive and ineffective as well as terribly inefficient, the better off we will be."</i>
This does not mean the GPF may never be used in COIN, to the contrary it will almost certainly have to be in some cases, thus my long time insistence on PME and training being full spectrum and my stating that "<i>The message for DoD and the Army is that we need tools -- and people -- tailored for jobs. The '...one size fits all...' days are gone.</i>"
The GPF issue is that, as we both acknowledge they will not do it well, we should AVOID their use in that mode <u>where possible</u> -- as opposed to <b><i>advocating</i></b> their use in the role (which is far too common...).
As you say:<blockquote>"...<b>some</b> individuals and units will take to it and most can be trained to do relevant parts of the mission in a way that is "good enough." (emphasis added / kw)</blockquote>I agree with that -- the question is what percentage of units and individuals constitute that 'some.' My experience says it's small, declines in successive tours and is an inadequate slice for 'success' -- however that success may be defined being the reason for the quotes; we tend to define that goal downwards as time goes on...
I also question the "good enough." While I'm a strong supporter of the old saw that "Best is the enemy of good enough" and a firm believer that a 75 percent solution now is usually better than 95 percent next week, that 'good enough' in the use of the GPF in a role for which they are not designed or suited (regardless of state of training) will always be less effective, less cost efficient in all aspects, cause more casualties of all types and likely do more political harm both domestically and internationally to the US...
Thus we should advocate "<i>Better Intelligence (or, more correctly, perhaps 'better shared intelligence...'), better State Department action and the early use of Special Forces in their UW/IW role as opposed to being wasted on direct action is key..."</i>because, as I said:<i>"... Most of the COIN fiascoes in the last 50 years could have been preempted easily by more aggressive action employing those three communities early on -- as has been proven by some smaller successes in the same period...</i>"
Surely you, of all people, can identify with that last statement...
Ken, you are correct, we really don't disagree very much, if at all. If we do disagree, it is over the degree to which we think GPF are adaptable. That said, my concern is that neither State nor the other civilian agencies have the capacity to do what needs to be done early on leaving DOD to provide forces many of whom are of necessity GPF rather than SF or even FAOs. We have had some success with RC forces both SOF and GPF communities but, as you say, we shouldn't have to tap those forces. Part of our problem is a failure of "whole of govt" - part is my old hobby horse lack of unity of command which is a result of not seeing the problem as one of "whole of govt" which brings us back to the less than best use of GPF.