Embracing the Clauswitzian disconnect in Afghanistan

By Dave Anderson:

After reading the Rolling Stone article that should shit-can General McCrystal, there was one paragraph on the last page that leapt out at me.  The only way that there has not been a mass revulsion at US operations in Afghanistan from the United States is due to tightly controlled information operations and propaganda that lulls the US population and significant sections of the elite Very Serious People that there is an end in sight, or at least some progress.

But facts on the ground, as history has proven, offer little deterrent to a military determined to stay the course. Even those closest to McChrystal know that the rising anti-war sentiment at home doesn't begin to reflect how deeply fucked up things are in Afghanistan. "If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular," a senior adviser to McChrystal says. Such realism, however, doesn't prevent advocates of counterinsurgency from dreaming big: Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its counterinsurgency campaign even further. "There's a possibility we could ask for another surge of U.S. forces next summer if we see success here," a senior military official in Kabul tells me.

This is the grand Clauswitzian disconnect of American Counterinsurgency (COIN).  It is a worship of an operational doctrine in lieu of a clear determination of national interests, benefits and costs of various courses of actions.  In February 2009, I noted this disconnect in costs versus benefits of previous COIN campaigns that some argued were successful:

COIN today promises the same type of inputs --- ten to twenty year wars, operational costs of one to two points of annual GDP at a time of structural deficits and domestic fiscal crisis --- with the same type of outcomes --- weak, client states in need of continual support in secondary or tertiary areas of interest.

And shockingly the public of democracies don't like COIN nor do they want to spend those resources for minimal real gains in security that operational and tactical successes may or may not generate. 

So if we assume that democracies are not likely to support doctrines, strategies and techniques  that produce long term ongoing costs with minimal prospects of producing desired long term political benefits, the problem in the Clauswitzian perspective is not the grand strategic level, but at the strategic and operational levels where the COIN doctrine is implemented in disregard to the grand strategic appreciation of forces and reality. 

The successes at the lower levels of importance do not align with the grand strategic interests of a democracy. At that point, COIN is an attempt to use tactical and operational success to ignore divergent grand strategic aims.  COIN as it does not recognize the grand strategic constraints in which it is implemented is the source of failure as it assumes a willingness to commit society's productive surplus for a generation to a secondary or tertiary theatre.

McChrystal and his coterie of advisers are thinking about doubling down on a strategy that will not deliver any benefits that are remotely comparable to the projected costs. And to do so, they will rely on the combination of actively concealing the situation in Afghanistan as well as engaging in a targeted PR campaign to build political pressure for continuation of a strategically counterproductive war. 

Wonderful!