Strategy? What Strategy?

by Stephen Holmes

The Daily Beast, September 30, 2009

Will President Obama embrace General Stanley McChrystal’s “new strategy” for Afghanistan and order the deployment of 30,000 to 40,000 more troops perhaps not to win the war there but at least to avoid losing it?  Or will the Administration conclude, after the seriously flawed Afghan election, that McChrystal’s strategy is neither affordable nor sustainable, and therefore decide to retain current troop levels, reduce them, or even withdraw?

To-escalate-or-not-to-escalate is the dramatic and consequential question of the moment.  But it rests on an unexamined assumption that is only weakly substantiated by the “Commander’s Initial Assessment,” sent by McChrystal to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on August 30 and calculatingly leaked to Bob Woodward.  It assumes that McChrystal actually has a strategy.  But does he?

That he has a diagnosis, there is no doubt.  And it is dire.  After eight years, nearly 800 American fatalities, and hundreds of billions of dollars: “the overall situation is deteriorating.”  Afghanistan is plagued by “a lack of security, governance, and economic opportunity.”  As a result, McChrystal’s forces are faced with “a resilient and growing insurgency” compounded by “a crisis of confidence among Afghans.”  The economy is fueled almost entirely by illegal drugs and foreign aid.   The citizens of Afghanistan “do not trust GIRoA [Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan] to provide their essential needs, such as security, justice, and basic services.”  Feelings of “political disenfranchisement” and alienation from governing authorities are exacerbated by the “weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials.”  Fairly or unfairly, US and NATO forces are blamed for “the unpunished abuse of power by corrupt officials and power-brokers.”  As a result, many “elements of the population” are “tolerating the insurgency and calling to push out foreigners.”  Misgovernment and lack of economic opportunity has created “fertile ground for the insurgency.”

So if this is McChrystal’s diagnosis, what remedy does he propose?

He obviously hopes to enhance security, improve the quality of governance, reduce official corruption, favoritism and abuse of power, and increase economic opportunity.  In this way, the population will be reconciled to the government supported by US and NATO forces, and the Taliban will be undercut.  But this is a wish list, not a strategy.  How does he propose to bring any of this about?

As a soldier addressing himself to the Secretary of Defense, naturally enough, McChrystal focuses first on what the military in particular can contribute to mission success. 

Up front is his proposal to build up the Afghan security forces through an increase in training, equipping, mentoring and partnering.  But there is nothing new about this proposal, even though numbers will be ramped up and ideal deadlines brought forward. Training is so noncontroversial that even advocates of a light footprint in Afghanistan accept it fully.  (Critics worry, on the other hand, that we are creating a military that cannot be sustained by domestic Afghan resources and that training doesn’t prevent corruption or desertion or, for that matter, create loyalty to a central government viewed as illegitimate.)

In any case, McChrystal isn’t simply saying that we need to do faster and better what we are already doing.  He is advocating, instead, a radical change of course.  For the past eight years, he explains, we have been fighting this war in a self-defeating way.  Not only did the Bush Administration fail to resource the war adequately; it did not understand that “security may not come from the barrel of a gun.”  Security comes, instead, from winning the support of the Afghan population and thereby driving “a wedge between the insurgents and the people.”  To rally popular support, foreign forces must adopt “a fundamentally new approach” or “a fundamentally new way of doing business.”  The “mindset” and “operational culture” of the military have to change in a radical way.  Above all it must shift emphasis from killing the enemy to protecting the population, thereby winning the people’s trust.

This is the gist of McChrystal’s proposal.  He does not expect a surge of additional troops to defeat the Taliban, but rather to “protect critical segments of the population,” especially those who live in densely populated urban areas not sparsely populated rural areas.  That is a key element in the “strategy” which, he sincerely believes, justifies his request for additional forces.

He makes no claims to originality in any of this.  Indeed, he freely admits that he is merely restating and applying to the Afghan campaign “the basics of counterinsurgency” in line with the thinking of his immediate superior, General David Petreus.  The concept is not difficult to grasp.  Foreign forces will fail to defeat an insurgency under two conditions, first, if they support a corrupt and abusive government and, second, if they accidentally kill many innocent civilians and generally behave as if they couldn’t care less about the sufferings they inflict, by accident or mistake, on the local population.  McChrystal recognizes a “natural aversion to foreign intervention” among the Afghans; but he argues, plausibly, that this aversion is considerably magnified by airstrikes in residential areas, aggressive driving by American convoys on city streets, and other manifestations of traditional combat culture that push locals into the arms of the insurgency by brashly signaling US and NATO indifference to the lives of civilians.

Reducing collateral damage will not suffice, however, to win the loyalty and support of the Afghan population, whose memories of our past behavior will presumably not be erased overnight.  To change the dynamics on the ground, McChrystal wants his troops to do, and do immediately, something they are naturally reluctant to do, namely to leave their walled compounds, dismount from their turreted vehicles, and perhaps even shed their body armor to “share risks” with the people they are trying to protect.  By removing these barriers to US soldier/Afghan civilian interaction, US forces will convey that they do not value American lives more than Afghan lives.  Lowering the physical barricades will shrink the psychological distance as well.  Face-to-face contact will allegedly promote mutual sympathy and trust.  By exiting from their hard shells, moreover, US troops will “gain accurate information and intelligence about the local environment” as well as acquiring “a far better understanding of Afghanistan and its people.”

You may approve or disapprove of increasing, by such methods, the risks to life and limb of US forces in Afghanistan.  But such proposals, like the ban on airstrikes in residential areas, do not add up to a new comprehensive strategy.  At most, they represent a few building blocks which, when stacked alongside and on top of other novel approaches, will contribute to a comprehensive strategy.  The genuinely “new strategy” that justifies additional manpower, in other words, can be understood only when we see how the proposed changes in military thinking and conduct are combined with proposed changes in the thinking and conduct of civilian agencies.  As the report says: “ISAF’s [International Security Assistance Force’s] new approach will be nested within an integrated and properly-resourced civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy.” 

Here we come to the report’s fatal flaw.  McChrystal’s request for additional resources is justified only if this integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy is intelligently and realistically designed.  Those who doubt that McChrystal has presented an even vaguely plausible strategy for success in Afghanistan have this overall civilian-military strategy in mind.

The report states several times that “protecting the people means shielding them from all threats.”  Two threats in particular are singled out.  The first threat is the insurgency.  To protect the population against the insurgency, McChrystal proposes a surge of new forces into densely populated areas, effectively abandoning sparsely populated areas to the Taliban, especially at night.  The second and equally grave threat is misgovernment at national, provincial, and local levels.  Elected and appointed officials are not only deeply corrupt, they are also “predatory” and “malign.”  Nepotism and favoritism is all pervasive: “some GIRoA officials have given preferential treatment to certain individuals, tribes, and groups or worse, abused their power at the expense of the people.”  Moreover, the Kabul government seems completely detached from and indifferent to the lives of average citizens: “There is little connection between the central government and the local populations, particularly in rural areas.”  Alienated from such an indifferent, corrupt, and abusive government, which also happens to be supported by “infidel” forces, many local communities choose to support the Taliban.  They do not always have to be intimidated or coerced.

So what is McChrystal’s strategy for dealing with this second threat to the American mission?  He provides his ostensible answer in “the second pillar” of his comprehensive civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy.  It is summarized in his hortatory recommendation that we “prioritize responsive and accountable governance.”  Or again: “We must assist in improving governance at all levels through both formal and traditional mechanisms.”  We need to do this for the simple reason that thieving, faction-dominated, incompetent, unresponsive and unaccountable governance “emboldens the insurgents.”  To prevent that from happening, the report explains, the US must “insist” that the elected government of Afghanistan “redouble efforts to understand the social and political dynamics of all regions of the country.”

Insisting that Kabul authorities take governance seriously, needless to say, may not necessarily do the trick.  So what other methods can we try?  Creating a secure environment by holding off the insurgency may create time and space for political and economic development.  But what is supposed to happen during that time and within that space?  It obviously isn’t enough simply to wait “until the Afghan people make the decision to support their government.”  So what strategy does McChrystal propose?

Strictly speaking, improving the quality of governance and reducing official corruption, favoritism and abuse of power is a civilian not a military mission.  To achieve this essential part of his overall strategy, without which, he admits, the military component would be entirely useless, McChrystal innocently expects Washington and its NATO allies to provide “a corresponding cadre of civilian experts to support the change in strategy.”  These civilian experts will bring to Afghanistan the technical expertise necessary to connect a hitherto disconnected central government to the rural population, to replace two-handed corruption with one-handed corruption, to create a minimally functioning system of justice, to create agricultural jobs profitable enough to prevent unemployed youth from joining the insurgency and, in general, to introduce “economic reforms” that will increase the standard of living.  And they will do all this in time for positive results to be visible to the Afghan people within 12 to 18 months, or before NATO troops begin to withdraw and political patience is exhausted in the US.

That this second “pillar” of McChrystal’s overall strategy is made of straw is the least that might be said.  The civilian experts he needs to prop up this essential half of his mission will not arrive because they do not exist.  The expertise he imagines cannot be found in any agency of the governments of the US or its allies.  Private contractors may be adept at securing multimillion dollar contracts to promote the rule of law in underdeveloped countries, but the results of their well-remunerated efforts have been consistently nil.  Not even they, who know no shame, pretend to be experts in creating well-organized and enduring political parties, a powerful buckle tying elected rulers to their electorate.  As we have just seen, the representatives of the international community cannot even ensure an honest counting of the votes.  By treating the problem of a government disconnected from its population as a technical problem susceptible of a technical solution, in other words, McChrystal’s report not only displays its own ingenuousness, but also reveals the emptiness of its claim to have presented a strategy for (possible) success worthy of being “fully resourced.” 

A realistic strategy for Afghanistan, by contrast to the report’s wishful approach, must begin with an admission of the profound limits of American power.  A good example is McChrystal’s proposal “to provide for the population ‘by, with, and through’ the Afghan government.”  The idea here is to bolster the shaky legitimacy of the Kabul regime by funneling foreign aid to the people through government agencies and thereby making Afghans see the government as a reliable partner and source of support.  This sounds good until one remembers “the extortion associated with large-scale developmental projects.”  In other words, we may intend to increase the legitimacy of the government by allowing it to take credit for financial and other assistance to the people; but we end up decreasing the legitimacy of the government when the funds we supply are skimmed or simply disappear.  Turning an illegitimate government into a legitimate one turns out to be demonstrably beyond the capacities of foreigners, however wealthy or militarily unmatched.  To keep the limits of American power in mind, it always helps to recall with exactly what the road to hell is famously paved.

Having established that the civilian “pillar” of the alleged strategy cannot bear the weight that McChrystal wants to place upon it, we can now turn a skeptical eye back on the military pillars as well.  The report understandably laments that, after eight difficult years, key officials in ISAF remain totally “inexperienced in local languages and culture.”  This seems inexplicable and inexcusable, because language training is something that the US military actually knows how to do.  In this area, at least, experts and expertise exist.  To explain why ignorance of local languages remains a problem, therefore, we need to look deeper, into the “mindset” of the foreign forces.  A clue can be overheard in the following new directive, emphasized in the report: “All ISAF personnel must,” as they did not do under McChrystal’s predecessors, “show respect for local cultures and customs and demonstrate intellectual curiosity about the people of Afghanistan.”

That American soldiers can be successfully ordered to demonstrate intellectual curiosity about a foreign people seems questionable.  But the principal reason why, until now, “ISAF has not sufficiently studied Afghanistan’s peoples whose needs, identities and grievances vary from province to province and from valley to valley,” is easy to understand.  Indeed, it is McChrystal’s starting point.  American soldiers, operating according to a conventional warfare model, originally came to Afghanistan geared up to kill the enemy not, in a Mother Teresa spirit, to help (or understand) the population.  McChrystal’s principal hope is to change their priorities.  But is that hope realistic?

Take McChrystal’s command for his troops to dismount from armored vehicles and share the risk with ordinary citizens.  Such behavior would allegedly demonstrate that American soldiers do not value American lives more than Afghan lives.  But will such a message accurately reflect the genuine feelings of the message-bearers?  They may be volunteers, ready to obey orders, but US troops do come from America after all, a land they consider, without self-consciousness, “the best country in the world.”  And if they have really come not simply to hurt the Taliban but rather, as McChrystal wishes, to help the Afghan people, isn’t their eleemosynary posture itself just further evidence of their innate superiority? 

Even if his soldiers accept McChrystal’s radical shift to population-centered counterterrorism as well as his exhortation to value Afghan and American lives equally, they are going to be operating among people who remember well how Americans have been acting for the past eight years.  These bitter memories may make locals doubt the true benevolence even of troops inwardly converted to the new approach.  Because trust and credibility cannot be established overnight, especially after years of high-handed behavior, McChrystal’s dismounted troops will be exposing themselves to grave risks for a hypothetical benefit that may or may not emerge sometime in the future.  Can he really convince them to do this?  The question becomes even sharper when we remember that the “garrison posture and mentality” that McChrystal decries was produced not by America’s conventional way of fighting wars alone but also by the proliferation of IEDs, a deadly threat that can be mitigated but not eliminated by strengthening friendly relations with locals. 

McChrystal’s assertion that building personal relations with the civilian population is a good way to gather accurate information has something to it; but it is also worth debating for reasons he does not seem to grasp.  Afghans, and not only they, have a lot of experience with manipulating foreigners by feeding them disinformation.  The closer we listen the more lies as well as truths we will take in.  For example, one faction can call down an air-strike on a rival faction simply by convincing US forces that its blood rival is affiliated with the Taliban or al Qaeda.  Less dramatically, foreign forces, desperate for local intelligence, regularly interpret servility as a sign of reliability.  This is unwise.  Local actors are obviously keen to please their foreign patrons or masters.  But it makes no sense first to teach locals how to talk in an American idiom and then to express delight when they tell us what we want to hear. McChrystal himself, in perhaps the most embarrassing passage of his report, shows how susceptible he is to this elementary fallacy.  I cite at length, to convey the degree to which McChrystal’s legendary toughness and integrity is the flipside of his sweet credulity:

“During consultations with Afghan Defense Minister Wardak, I found some of his writings insightful: 'Victory is within our grasp provided that we recommit ourselves based on lessons learned and provided that we fulfill the requirements needed to make success inevitable... I reject the myth advanced in the media that Afghanistan is a “graveyard of empires” and that the U.S. and NATO effort is destined to fail. Afghans have never seen you as occupiers, even though this has been the major focus of the enemy's propaganda campaign. Unlike the Russians, who imposed a government with an alien ideology, you enabled us to write a democratic constitution and choose our own government. Unlike the Russians, who destroyed our country, you came to rebuild.’ Given that this conflict and country are his to win – not mine -- Minister Wardak's assessment was part of my calculus.”

If this is the way Americans build personal relations with Afghans, then staying inside one’s walled compounds and armored vehicles may not be such a bad idea after all.

Beyond all of the doubts raised here about the viability of McChrystal’s over-hyped new strategy lies a deeper misgiving.  What does state building in Afghanistan have to do with protecting American from terrorist attacks?  If state strength is a cure for terrorism, why do we worry about states that sponsor terrorism?  If state building is an answer to terrorism, why is Israel not eager to build a Palestinian state?  This problem was brought nicely into focus by Richard Holbrooke, in a March press conference explaining the Administration’s new policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Pakistan presents the greater challenge for US counterterrorism efforts, Holbrooke explained, “because it’s a sovereign country, and there is a red line. And the red line is unambiguous and stated publicly by the Pakistani government over and over again. No foreign troops on our soil.”  In other words, the stronger the state, even when it is formally allied to the US, the more able and willing it becomes to create “denied areas,” that is, regions where US counterterrorism forces are not allowed to operate. We don’t need to generalize wildly here.  But the very possibility that state building can make counterterrorism more difficult, a possibility never contemplated in McChrystal’s weakly reasoned report, further undermines the credibility of his approach, this time by casting serious doubt on the value of the ultimate aim which his revolutionary “new strategy” is purportedly designed to achieve.

Stephen Holmes is professor of law and research director of the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. His most recent book is Matador’s Cape: America’s Reckless Response to Terror. 

This article originally appeared here.