Thoughts on others' thoughts on "Responsible Transition" (EDITED)

I'm not going to offer a comprehensive critique of Dave Barno and Andrew Exum's new report on the path forward in Afghanistan, because I'd like to spend a little more time going over it before I comment in depth, and because I'm not interested in spending a lot of time on it right now. But I'd like to say a few things about what other people have said, because it's easier to criticize than to do any kind of deeper analysis.

First of all, full disclosure: I'm not going to make any disclosure statements. FFS, you don't even know my name! Why would I disclose anything else? Seriously though: Ex and I are friends, but we have significantly different ideas about the war in Afghanistan. I read a draft of this paper two months ago and gave some very brief but critical feedback. So let me just say up front that 1) my friendship with Ex doesn't keep me from busting his balls and telling him when I think he's wrong, and 2) if I had any organizational or philosophical fealty to CNAS, I'd be at their Christmas party right now instead of defending their institutional integrity on the internet.

That said: it is very, very bizarre to criticize CNAS or the paper's authors for failing to recant previously articulated support for a broad-based, well-resourced counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan. Here's Bernard Finel:

Finally, about CNAS.  I know it has no “institutional positions” and hence no obligation to explain shifts in analysis.  But that is wildly disengenuous [sic]. We are seeing a major reversal in CNAS’s position on COIN issues — which are their signature area of research and influence – and refusing to acknowledge past mistakes or address new assessments is, well, creepy.  It is vaguely Stalinist — you know, we’ll just rewrite history and pretend nothing happened.  I am pretty sure that if Heritage new year started promoting higher taxes they would feel obliged to explain why their views had changed. The “no institutional positions” line from CNAS leaders is just a cop out.  Own your past mistakes. Acknowledge them and learn from them.

And then there's Michael Cohen, who tweeted that "CNAS has gone 180 on COIN and offers no explanation." [EDIT: Let me clarify here that I'm not dealing with Cohen's criticism of the report in any kind of comprehensive way. He feels like he's been unfairly lumped in with Finel here, and that's probably true. So go read his criticism of the paper, which repeats some of Bernard's goofy lament about how wrong Ex was a year ago, but also makes an important point about how he and Barno have mostly overlooked the reconciliation process.]

"Bizarre" is probably not the right word for this; that suggests that this kind of criticism is unexpected and inexplicable. Anyone who's read Bernard's blog (or Cohen's, for that matter) could've predicted this sort of overwrought critique --- "major reversal," "creepy," "vaguely Stalinist, "rewrite history," etc. -- simply by observing how many of those who have been advocating withdrawal for some time seem so aggrieved at never having been suitably acknowledged. In fact, that seems to be some critics' main takeaway from "Responsible Transition": not satisfaction that formerly outspoken advocates of an expanded effort in South Asia have come 'round to their point of view, but rather outrage that CNAS seems not to have been sufficiently punished for giving a home to those advocates who, in Bernard's words, "were simply wrong based on the available evidence at the time." Finel is pissed, and not just at the fact that there are still people who disagree with him, or that the U.S. is still in Afghanistan -- he's pissed that everyone didn't agree with him in the first place. After all, "[d]evelopments in Afghanistan since the 2009 surges have been exactly as any informed observer would have expected," he writes. They were wrong "based on the available evidence at the time"! By this line of thinking, anyone who pushed a different policy course than he and his fellow sober pragmatists must be a charlatan, "a courtier (and worse)," a war profiteer, or a liar.

But what of CNAS' "disingenuous" refusal to excoriate its very own institutional self for "past mistakes" and a "shift in analysis"? For a "180 on COIN" with "no explanation"? Well, Bernard's own words satisfy this nutty complaint: "I know it has no 'institutional positions'..." What further need is there for qualification? They don't have institutional positions! The analysis of their employees does not constitute the analysis of the organization! To say that COIN is CNAS' "signature area of research and influence" simply because Nagl and Exum have been vocal in support of that operational approach is just as absurd as saying that Brookings' "signature area of research and influence" is the Bush Doctrine because it employs Pollack and O'Hanlon. And to say that CNAS has undergone a "major reversal in its position on COIN issues" when it DOESN'T HAVE AN INSTITUTIONAL POSITION ON ANY ISSUES is just damned goofy.

So is this the great "reversal" that Bernard is trumpeting, the "180 on COIN" of Cohen's dreams? Well, in short, no. First of all, as the report notes, the COINdinistas didn't get everything they wanted out of the so-called "surge": the president offered a more limited vision and rejected a massive, protracted troop presence. Exum and Barno are adapting to the reality of 2010: the president has elaborated his strategy, we've had an additional year to observe the progress of the war, and the U.S. government, NATO, and the Afghan government have demonstrated over that period their collective seriousness about the drawdown-by-'11, transition-by-'14 timeline. The authors aren't saying "my bad, this COIN stuff is a bunch of nonsense and it's not working, so listen up while I pimp some other plan." They're saying "look, no matter what anybody said before, these are the decisions the president has made about the near and mid-term, so here's how we get the best results out of that over the long term." To put it simply, anyone who is painting this as a "reversal" or "180" on COIN is completely full of shit.

Now, are the recommendations themselves any good? As I said before, I've got my own complaints. [EDIT #2:] For what it's worth, here's a snip of what I wrote about the draft that I originally saw:

So I guess in conclusion, I like what you're trying to do here, and I very much like the acknowledgement that the current strategy doesn't have a real, concrete end point. But I have some major concerns about a) your justification for continued involvement (i.e. WHY winning is important); b) your explanation for how this approach actually works better to achieve our goals in Afghanistan (i.e. HOW we win this way); c) your apparent willingness to sacrifice on the big picture (not getting Americans blown up by al-Qaeda) in order to meet with some limited success in the small picture (keeping Afghanistan from collapse to the Taliban) (i.e. WHAT the point of what we're doing here is).

I objected to the bits about increased leverage on the Pakistanis, both because I think we're already trying pretty hard on that one and because there's no concrete elaboration of exactly how to do it. I'm a bit uncomfortable with the sizing of the "residual force" for the same reasons: it's not that 30K is necessarily the wrong number, but I'd like to see them show their work. Why 30,000 and not 25,000? Or 15,000? Or 40,000? And then there's the bit about shifting investment away from the central government in Kabul and increasing support for local government, which I think is plainly inconsistent with an indirect approach that will necessarily be largely dependent on Afghan Security Forces... that are organized, trained, equipped, and directed by the national government. How do you keep building up ANSF while shifting investment to local government? How do you support decentralized militias/arbakai without getting them shot at by previously U.S.-trained and -equipped ANSF? Without creating yet more unpredictable conflict dynamics? And so on.

But all in all, "Responsible Transition" is something to be happy about. People with influence are taking a pragmatic approach to post-"surge" Afghanistan and trying to understand how we get from where we are and where we will be to where we need to be. They're not saying they wish the last year hadn't happened, they're not arguing that the president is dumb and shouldn't have made the decisions that he did, and they're not working with fantasy counterfactuals about woulda, coulda, shoulda or if only we hadn't. They're trying to understand America's vital and enduring interests, to make sense of what those mean in South Asia, and to move the state of play in the region from where it is now to where it ought to be under the resource and political constraints we can all feel confident will obtain in coming years. We ought to applaud that, not act butt-hurt about the fact that nobody listened a year ago.

Other criticisms of "Responsible Transition":

• Keith Boyea, "For Afghanistan, a Wind of Change From Washington," guest post at Newshoggers
• Josh Foust, "'A Responsible Transition'," Registan.net
• Herschel Smith, "Afghanistan: Responsible Transition," The Captain's Journal (LULZ)

Morality and Dissent: Redux

LtCol Milburn sure has caused quite a stir with that article of his. The latest commentary is from Bernard Finel who believes that I (and Dr. Kohn) use the "Nuremberg Defense" by ignoring peremptory norms, the "I just followed my orders" defense. I don't think that was the argument I made.

I'll draw Bernard's attention to the final paragraph of my post where I write that "once legal orders are issued a professional military officer has the obligation to execute those orders regardless of his or her personal moral views." I'll highlight the term "legal orders" - which in present day (or at least late 1990s, early 2000s) military officer education includes peremptory norms as a basis for legal orders. So, no, I don't see that I'm using the Nuremberg Defense that allows military officials to say they were just following orders.

As for the examples he uses from the Milburn article, I think Bernard is correct. The military should have questioned the disbanding of the Iraqi security apparatus in 2003, but the order given was quite legal, if ill-advised. They had an obligation to enforce it - something Milburn seems to disagree with. The military likewise should have dissented from upholding many of the detainee policies under the Bush Administration as they were quite illegal. General Hayden's defense (trusting the legal interpretation of the Administration) was unfounded and there should have been legal repercussions to him and other uniformed personnel who broke the law.

Essentially, I agree with Bernard and I don't think my previous post was argued as portrayed. I didn't mention peremptory norms specifically because my education placed it under the penumbra of legal basis for orders. We both agree that Milburn's "negative consequences" test would create a new CMR norm that would give the U.S. military unprecedented, and unhealthy to say the least, power to buck the civilian leadership in its own interests. Where Bernard and I still might diverge, as far as I can tell from his post, is the role morality plays as a basis for officer dissent as I can't tell if he thinks that morality does have a role beyond non-statutory, peremptory norms. I still firmly believe that dissent can only be based on the legality of the order. Granted, there is always some interpretation of legality and organizations are prone to expand their legal maneuver-space, but the United States has plenty of precedence from which to draw upon to help adjudicate such matters. The controversial orders given in the wake of 9-11 seem, for the most part, to fall neatly into categories of legal and illegal. Too bad those who executed those illegal orders didn't dissent at the time, as was their obligation.

A Number of Voids Need to be Filled. With a New CMR Paradigm.

In a post this morning, Dr. Finel extrapolates upon my post yesterday and his own from the day before. Keeping this post from from Adam Elkus in mind, I have to say that I agree with everything Bernard has written in his latest. Except for one thing.

I am not making the Yingling argument from "Failure in Generalship." I was just noting that I see the nature of military culture filling the void of strategic incoherence. Where I disagree, vehemently, with COL Yingling is that in no way, shape, or form should generals fill that strategic void with operational art. Observing that this is occurring is not the same as endorsing this reality.

I stated that our civilian leaders need to provide the military with strategic leadership and I stand by that: it is how civ-mil relations should be balanced in our system and we're witnessing the repercussions of their failure to provide that leadership. Operational art is no substitute for strategy or grand strategy. But as this conversation has progressed over the past day or so, I agree with Adam that civilian leaders are unlikely to provide that strategic guidance any time soon. So now what?

Honestly, I have no idea at this point. But I think this should cause us to pause and think about what civ-mil relations should look like in an era of strategic uncertainty. Military officers dictating policy because civilians can't or won't is not a durable solution (especially in the arena of public lobbying for war support). A new paradigm must be created and new lines of responsibilities need to drawn, because the current system does not support the strategic realities we're facing now and in the foreseeable future. I don't know that Bernard would agree with me here, but I still see it as incumbent upon the civilian leaders to create the new rules or military culture will continue to expand and fill the strategic void. Where Bernard and I likely agree is that we can't continue to allow that expansion to happen.

Filling the Void and Re-balancing Civ-Mil Relations

Bernard Finel has a very good post on civil-military relations - a topic he's written very often on. His main points are concern over the politicization of generals driving policy, that blame doesn't really matter, that presidents can fire generals but doing so is tricky, and that presidents often use the uniforms to see wars. I have to say that I find Bernard's arguments compelling and on the mark.

Sure, generals are often over-political and too often drive policy and therefore there is an imbalance in what we should consider "normal" civ-mil relations. And he's right that everyone is to blame: the generals should know better and the politicians should have tighter reins. But I think he's leaving one point out: the nature of military leadership. U.S. military doctrine demands that leaders act based on their best interpretation of their commander's intent. If that intent is nebulous enough, subordinate leaders have wide flexibility of action. And that's where we've come to in Afghanistan.

Our Afghan strategy, if you could call it such, is horribly vague to the point of uselessness, which I see has a failure in leadership at the highest levels here in DC. Any general, with 30-plus years of leadership experience, will naturally fill that void with how he best interprets his commander's intent. In this case it seems to simply means: win in Afghanistan. So I think that is what Generals McChrystal and Petraeus were and are attempting to do. I don't see this as a power grab by the generals and I don't necessarily see the President as trying to use them to sell the war. Nor do I see it as a crisis - yet. But the civilians aren't providing the leadership they should and the generals are filling that void as their nature dictates they should. The only solution to this particular imbalance, in my mind, is not to fire generals, but instead create a viable strategy and policy and provide the generals the leadership they need and deserve.

UPDATE: Adam Elkus, via Twitter (@Simlaughter): "To some degree I think the scope of contemporary doctrine often reflects this strategic uncertainty" - This is quite likely. And if he's right, I think the probability of a civ-mil disaster is looming.

Welcome to the party, David, even if you're like three years late

Did you know that America's global competitors are focusing on the development of anti-access technologies to counter U.S. power projection and expeditionary capabilities? Oh, you did? Yeah, me too. I heard from Andy Krepinevich like a year ago. And Bob Gates even before that. David Wood just caught on, apparently from "Pentagon strategists." But, I mean, that's cool -- keep getting the word out!

The United States, Pentagon strategists say, is quickly losing its ability to barge in without permission. Potential target countries and even some lukewarm allies are figuring out ingenious ways to blunt American power without trying to meet it head-on, using a combination of high-tech and low-tech jujitsu.

At the same time, U.S. naval and air forces have been shrinking under the weight of ever more expensive hardware. It's no longer the case that the United States can overwhelm clever defenses with sheer numbers.As Defense Secretary Robert Gates summed up the problem this month, countries in places where the United States has strategic interests -- including the Persian Gulf and the Pacific -- are building "sophisticated, new technologies to deny our forces access to the global commons of sea, air, space and cyberspace.''Those innocuous words spell trouble. While the U.S. military and strategy community is focused on Afghanistan and the fight in Marja, others – Iran and China, to name two – are chipping away at America's access to the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf and the increasingly critical extraterrestrial realms.

On the bright side, Wood links to Krepinevich's new study Why AirSea Battle?, which focuses on DoD's efforts to develop a counter-anti-access operational concept. It's worth a read. While you're at it, you might also take a look at Gunslinger's Document of the Week: The U.S. Navy's Vision for Confonting Irregular Challenges (or as Bernard Finel described it on Twitter, "fascinating document. Shows the power of the COIN/hybrid war junta inside the building." Um, right).

I probably wouldn't highlight this Wood piece on any other day, but I have a case of the redass about an appearance he made on the Diane Rehm Show the other night, in which he said some frankly idiotic things about what's going on in Afghanistan. (My favorite part is where he says that U.S. forces are pursuing "in essence a conventional, industrial-age strategy in Marja, not unlike one you saw in the American Civil War 150 years ago.") I would really encourage you not to listen.

Back to you, Bernard

I recently had an exchange with Bernard Finel in the comments section of his blog about the purported effectiveness of the Taliban as an insurgent group, and by extension, the ineffectiveness of the ANSF. He responded in a separate post to some questions that I posed, and I keep promising to get back to him. Now that I've waited so long as to let his post fall off the front page, I figure I'll deal with his responses here. Check out the whole post on Bernard's blog, though, as I haven't reproduced the entire exchange here. (My questions in bold, and his responses set off as quotations.)

1) What do you mean when you say that “the Taliban and associates are so effective”? Why are you certain that this is true?

I’d say that results suggest the Taliban is more effective. With less money and fewer men that ISAF/ANA they have steadily expanding their reach in the country. While Joshua Foust is probably correct that the ICSD report that the Taliban has a permanent presence in 80% of the country is likely an overstatement, I don’t think anyone doubts that the Taliban has widening its operational area. The insurgent forces seem to act with a high degree of self-sufficiency. They are continuing to function even in areas that are ostensibly under coalition control. And remember, the Taliban presence in the country was rebuilt after the shattering defeats of 2001-2002. In short, while we seem to be having an inordinate amount of trouble building reliable Afghan forces capable of accomplishing their assigned missions, the Taliban and associated networks have been able to build a force capable of acting in most of Afghanistan in a disciplined fashion to implement what seems to be a coherent strategy.

I admit this is a subjective assessment. And I am willing to be convinced otherwise, but on the whole the insurgents seem to more effective that the Afghan security forces.

I'm not really that familiar with the data on this, so I don't know if "the Taliban [is] widening its operational area" or not -- it's all anecdotal. Acting "with a high degree of self-sufficiency" and "continuing to function even in areas that are ostensibly under coalition control" seem to me to be hallmarks of an extant insurgency, not signs that it is growing in power or reach.

Yes, it's clearly true that we're having difficulty building effective enough ANSF quickly enough to combat the insurgency. Building security forces from whole cloth is an expensive and time-intensive process, particularly when that newly established military must be tailored to confront threats very different from the ones our military has trained, equipped, organized, and educated itself to do. Insurgent groups don't face the same sort of obstacles for the simple reason that they don't require institutions, at least not at this stage of the insurgency. The Taliban need only figure out what's effective in combat and replicate it, adapting as necessary.

In summary, I don't think it's at all clear that Taliban forces are objectively more capable than ANSF, only that their circumstances confer certain advantages that allow for tactical (even if geographically broad) success.

2) If we do accept your assertion that the insurgents are more effective than the ANSF: isn’t it fair to say that what is required for insurgents to be considered “effective” is considerably less difficult to achieve than what we’d need to see to assign such a label to the ANSF?

I agree, and I have indeed argued that “Insurgencies, once established, run downhill. Counter-insurgencies, always, run uphill.” But there two caveats. First, “once established” is a significant qualifier as our good friend Che might have acknowledged. There was nothing inevitable about the Taliban resurgence. Having ruled brutally before being been chased from power after having provoked a foreign intervention, it would seem the Taliban would have an uphill battle to become again a significant force. They are not receiving significant foreign support. When the history of the Taliban is written far in the future, when passions have cooled, and the issue is studied purely as a matter of military history I suspect people are going to recognize in the recovery of the Taliban an instance of a movement/insurgency that is rare for its resilience. The point is, that yes, insurgencies have some structural advantages, but nonetheless, I think we have to acknowledge that thus far the Taliban is proving itself to be more effective than most historic insurgencies.

Second, saying that it is easier to be an insurgent does not mean it is easy. I admit, I don’t wholly understand why the Taliban — and affiliates — is able to operate outside of Pashtun areas. But I think some observers subscribe to a caricature that portrays the Taliban as just a bunch of thugs and killers. They are that, certainly. But from what I can tell — and I happy to be corrected on this score if I am wrong — they seem to using a relatively sophisticated operational concept. They are blowing stuff up, yes. And threatening “collaborators.” But they are also, somehow positioning themselves as an anti-corruption and nationalist movement. They represent more than just a coercive force. So while being an insurgent is potentially easier, just as we hope to “live among the people” and build institutions, I think Taliban fighters are also similarly required to balance military and political action. Indeed, it is this ability that, I think, explains part of what make them such a challenge, unlike, say, AQI which was just a source of insecurity. Anyway, long story short. Creating insecurity is easy. But generating a successful insurgency requires more than that… and I suspect that if we captured Mullah Omar’s IN guidance, it would at least mirror some of McChrystal’s COIN guidance.

I agree, there was nothing inevitable about the Taliban's return to prominence. But let's also be clear about the fact that they are not close to returning to power as a government, even in the limited geographical range where they held power in 2001. And let's also be clear about the fact that roughly seven years of relative coalition inattention has permitted a resurgence in certain limited areas.

As you know, and as you allude to in this post, parties to a civil war that can be seen to have success find it much easier to gain control and support, so it's perfectly reasonable that the insurgents' success in some under-resourced areas to which we've paid little attention would snowball regionally or nationally. This isn't due to a failure of the ANSF as a tactical force, but rather to a failure of strategic and operational planning. The prior administration actively resisted the stand-up of capable ANSF for several years, and there weren't sufficient numbers of coalition troops to pacify the countryside unilaterally. This, really, is an answer to the broader question (if we do accept that the Taliban are more capable, which I don't, exactly): the Taliban have had a few years' head start.

I still don't accept the assertion that any progress made by the Taliban is directly attributable to any unique capabilities or appeal, but rather believe that they've successfully made use of both structural advantages and specific geographic ones: insurgencies thrive in mountainous areas and other difficult terrain, in places where population density is sparse and villages and towns isolated from one another, and in areas that lack modern transportation infrastructure. These realities obtain in basically all of the places that the insurgency has met with significant success.

It is absolutely true that the Taliban "represent more than just a coercive force." It's widely understood that the Taliban's provision of law courts and consistent justice is something that aids their standing among many Afghans, particularly when contrasted with the corruption and ineffectiveness of Afghan government. They absolutely do -- at least on limited occasions -- "balance military and political action." But isn't it clear that the bar is much lower on this, seeing as they're not the legitimate government? If the Taliban were so effective at doing this, then why the popular discontent during the period where they were actually in power?

Right now, the Taliban have a "successful insurgency" simply because they haven't lost. They have manipulated circumstances such that it looks even less likely that they will lose in the future, so I suppose that could be considered progress. But when you write that "creating insecurity is easy... but generating a successful insurgency requires more than that," I'm curious what the "more than that" is. I don't think I necessarily agree with you. Creating a successful revolution, or providing a governing alternative, those are things that require more. But generating a successful insurgency only requires the creation of insecurity and momentum... the appearance and reality of some limited success. Then others will jump on board, whether or not they share the political ideology or specific grievance of the insurgency's core.

I'm not going to specifically address questions three and four because I think that the former is somewhat irrelevant (though I apologize if I misrepresented you) and that the latter is covered above. Thanks for the opportunity to explain myself, though, and for making me consider these questions more deeply.