Capabilities and goals

By Dave Anderson:

Matthew Yglesias raises a question about "training and mentoring" and extends it to motivation of the Afghan army and other government aligned security forces.  He senses a disconnect in goal sets that leads to ineffectiveness:

The Taliban is able to raise a military force capable of participating effectively in an Afghan civil war without the support of an advanced foreign military and without a years-long �training� program sponsored by a an outside great power. So why can�t the other side do it....

the fact of the matter is that �wage a civil conflict in Afghanistan� is something that lots of Afghans have experience in. I can�t think of any reason to believe that its something American military officers are more knowledgeable about than are Afghan commanders. We have better weapons and more money than they do. But we can give them guns and money rather than a massive direct deployment of American forces. Recall that we�re currently spending five times Afghanistan�s annual GDP on the war effort, which certainly doesn�t sound like an efficient application of our massive edge in material resources.

Last week, I outlined the US minimal and maximal goal set and how the minimal goal set has been accomplished and the disconnect between the poorly enunciated maximal goal set of the United States and every other interested Afghan actors' goal sets is leading to massive strategic friction:

The US goals in Afghanistan are a bit more complex because they have not been well enunciated for a while. The minimal goal set was the disruption and destruction of "far enemy" camps and operational infrastructure that would support future long distance strikes. That has been achieved. After that the US still thinks it can create a modern, multi-ethnic democracy on the Hindu Kush with centralized power and the effective suppression of the drug trade. Basically the US wants the the Pashtuns to suck on it for the next several generations.

No one else, including the relevant non-Pashtun Afghan actors want the Pashtuns to suck on it for the next several generations as the cost of suppression is way to high when there is plenty of money to be made in smuggling and drug dealing and nothing else. Instead most of the relevant local actors want to start cutting deals and restore the 'normal' environment after a bit of shuffling of who is on top. That is a much simpler, faster and less bloody goal set than the total transformation of Afghanistan's political and cultural norms as well as the suppression of one of the leading groups in the shared (and very weak) Afghan national identity.

We have the capacity in the form of B-52s, TLAMS, and the 75th Ranger Regiment to beat down on formation of "far enemy" training and organizational nodes and camps.  Everything after that is our weighing in on an Afghan civil war in pursuit of goals that none of the other actors involved in that civil war really give a damn about.  They have their own agendas, and if playing the US and ISAF for weapons, supplies, and money is a viable tactic, they will do so in advance of their agenda and goal set, not ours.