Afghanistan’s Legacy: Emerging Lessons of an Ongoing War by Stephen Biddle, The Washington Quarterly
The war in Afghanistan is not over. Nor is it ending any time soon. The U.S. role may end in 2016, in whole or in part, but the war will continue—and its ultimate outcome is very much in doubt. The conflict is now stalemated militarily, and will likely stay that way as long as outsiders pay the large bills needed to keep the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in the field and fighting. The war will thus grind onward until this funding dries up or the two sides negotiate a compromise settlement, neither of which is imminent. Depending on how any talks unfold, historians in 2050 could thus look back on this war as a costly but tolerable outcome for the West, as a wasteful disaster, or as something in between; for now, all we know for sure is that it continues.
Yet, for many Americans the war is already receding in the rearview mirror. President Obama, for example, often suggests that by as early as 2014 “this long war will come to a responsible end.” It will not, in fact, but Americans could be excused for thinking otherwise, given such framing. Nor is the President alone in this thinking, though many of his compatriots are taking a notably less optimistic tone in their retrospectives.
Among the most important of these pre-postmortems is an emerging debate on the war’s lessons. Perhaps the most common position is that Afghanistan shows the futility of counterinsurgency (COIN). By contrast with the President’s view, many now believe the war can already be deemed a failure in spite of massive investment. For critics such as Gian Gentile or Andrew Bacevich, this failure in Afghanistan shows how counterinsurgency’s demands cannot be met, and how the United States should therefore avoid such wars at all costs in the future. For many in this camp, Iraq, too, was a failure; others see Iraq as an eleventh-hour turnaround brought about by good luck in the idiosyncratic Sunni realignment of the Anbar Awakening. Even the latter group, however, usually sees Afghanistan as evidence that COIN cannot succeed without the happy accident of the enemy changing sides...
Comments
In the past, when this question was asked, I provided, at another thread, a concept of "lessons learned." But then I failed to see and address "The Curmudgeon's" question that followed. Both my comment, and The Curmudgeon's question, are provided below for consideration.
To begin, however, one must understand that the lessons that I believe we have learned have much less to do with counterinsurgency and much more to do with the dominant thinking, and related actions, which CAUSED THE INSURGENCIES in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
So, with this understanding in mind, here goes:
Lesson: Regime change -- as a means of achieving our political objective (the transformation of states and societies more along modern western lines) -- is not the way to go. This, because regime change is as likely -- or more likely -- to produce negative rather than positive results, such as:
a. States and societies becoming allied with our enemies (example: Iraq's alliance with Iran).
b. States and societies tending to dissolve, degrade, disintegrate or otherwise descend into chaos (think what might occur in Syria).
c. States and societies remaining cohesive, but only by adopting ways of life and ways of governance that are even more detrimental to our interests (example: by becoming organized, ordered and oriented along Islamist lines).
Lesson: The idea of universal values is pure BS. Thus, one cannot base one's actions (for example: invasion/regime change/counterinsurgency) on the idea that states and societies -- liberated from their oppressive regimes -- will, quickly, easily and mostly on their own, adopt, for example, modern western ways. In stark contrast, states and societies -- liberated from their oppressive regimes -- (and specifically because of differing values) are as likely, or more likely, to conform to the "a" - "c" models shown immediately above.
Lesson: (Related to the lesson immediately above.) We cannot rely on our "soft power" to get the (state and societal transformation) job done. Herein, the so-called "shinning house on hill" having -- in many parts of the world -- much less influence, and much less "pull," than we originally thought.
So: What to do?
Accept that -- in spite of the end of the Cold War -- a "new era" has not dawned. And that, accordingly, one must, as in the days of the Cold War, work by, with and through often odious and oppressive regimes (rather than via populations) to get the state and societal transformation jobs done.
Herein, the proper examples are China, Russia and Vietnam; wherein, our instruments of power and persuasion allowed that these regimes:
a. Maintained control of their states and societies themselves, as these regimes, themselves,
b. Transformed their countries -- more incrementally -- along modern western lines.
How to summarize these 21st Century/post-Cold War lessons/learning? As follows:
1. A "new era" HAS NOT dawned. Thus,
2. One cannot base one's actions -- as we did recently -- on "new era" thinking (example: "universal values").
by TheCurmudgeon | June 10, 2014 - 5:49pm Login or register to post comments
"Bill, I largely agree with you, yet clearly that is not the lesson that the think-tank crowd has learned. The question to you is, what do you plan to do about it? How are you going to get your story out?"
Now to, finally, answer the Curmudgeon's question:
I believe that the "lessons" I have provided above have already been learned by the appropriate people.
Thus, the overall and centrally controlling decision and movement -- to achieve transformation of states and societies more along modern western political, economic and social lines -- via "diplomacy and development," rather than via "defense" (invasion, regime change, counterinsurgency, etc.)