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The rise of the isolationist right in the last decade has been motivated by the protracted counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their overwrought reaction – that the country must retreat into Fortress America — nonetheless merits an evaluation of the strategic lessons that can be learned from those two military misadventures.
That’s the heart of it.
Very helpful, CanCinci…Does your partition of Iraq mean that Joe Biden got something right, once? Just wondering.
In Afghanistan we have taken our eyes off the ball in two separate cycles, and the Afghans know that America cannot be trusted to have an attention span long enough to get the job done. After Charlie Wilson got us to arm the Mujaheddin for fighting the Soviets, there was an opportunity for a welcomed American presence, but we lost interest and left them to their own devices. The result was the Taliban.
After we brought the Taliban rule to an end following the 9-11 attack, Bush chose to invade Iraq, and we lost interest in Afghanistan. While we were distracted in Iraq bad things happened and the Taliban developed a stronghold in Pakistan and a network in Afghanistan.
The problem is not the nature of the enemy. The problem is with our own domestic politics. America does not have a way to develop a strategy and pursue it for a longer period of time than the term of the President who owns the strategy.
ADD kids can be really creative and diligent on some tasks. Diplomacy and war are not likely to be successful when conducted by ADD America.
Not all of the neo-isolationists are knuckle-dragging “Fortress America” types. I am so thoroughly disgusted with our people, our politics, and our policies alike that I feel we can offer only lies and treachery to those who need our help. The American people no longer have it in them to win a war, to pursue a war, or to even admit we are in a war. We will not fight abroad, and we will not fight at home.
I oppose our dabbling in ISIS et al because we already won that war and then decided to throw away all the hard-earned assets. So no, I don’t support sending any more Americans to die for nothing. FOR NOTHING.
And I oppose any re-vamped reconsideration of our involvement in Afghanistan because I just returned from there, and it is too late. What will be will be, and the American people are only too willing to forget.
Our military interventions used to be centered about our interests. Now it is just another big government program. I will support any amount of spending to maintain the ability to crush bad countries, but not one cent for piddling around without crushing somebody.
We need to crush ISIS …
We can no more “crush ISIS” than we can wrestle the blowing sand.
If you can overcome the political obstacles to going “completely Roman”, then you can also overcome the political obstacles to merely encouraging allies go completely Roman.
Thus a quick start would be to let Sisi go completely Roman on the Brotherhood, let Israel go completely Roman on Hamas and Hezbollah, tell the Pakistanis to go completely Roman on their Taliban and other jihadis, and tell the Saudis to go completely Roman on their Wahabbis.
Pakistan has supported the Taliban in various ways, even Bin Laden was hiding out in plain sight.
The Saudis are the foundation of Wahabi.
As for Israel, they should pursue the peace and safety of their citizens in the most effective way possible. How to best do that is their decision.
Note my precise use of “let” for the first two and “tell” for the second two. We do not have the ability to wipe out the Pakistani or Saudi jihadis. But we have the ability to wipe out the governments of those countries if they do not wipe out their own jihadis. Thus “tell”.
As for Israel, that has not been US policy but should be. Thus “let”.
So … federalism.
CTLAW #11 – Is it not interesting that we seem constantly to inhibit our friends while enpowering our enemies.
Very interesting thoughts, CC. Thank you.
Sigh, where to begin.
As a result, our grand strategy should be to avoid conflict with major adversaries while ensuring that any conflict we enter with a third-world adversary be conventional in nature. Guerilla wars should be avoided, and — if they can’t — we should use local proxies as much as possible for the low-tech, in-your-face grunt work.
–Guerilla wars and successful counterinsurgency strategies have worked time and time again. It requires political will and an understanding of how to fight the strategies. It as much a political strategy as much as a military one. Insurgencies are routinely beaten with countless examples of such. Malaya, Viet Nam*, Kenya, almost all the insurgencies in South and Central America, I could go on.
–The biggest mistake in Iraq and Afghanistan was not assuming they were homogenous nation states. The biggest mistake was not bothering to continue with sensible post war plans in Iraq, and mission creep in Afghanistan.
–I am well aware of the history of those countries and how they were founded. So what. Many modern countries are founded that way and still manage to hold themselves together. There are lots of Iraqis who see themselves as nationalists. That’s the whole point of Baathism. Somehow most of these countries managed to hold together in one form or another and have moderately successful civil societies with all there competing tribes, before we came along. The biggest problem I see is the usual conceit that their was one easy answer.
–Your Northern Ireland example falls flat on its face. The British Army managed to hold itself together for centuries despite the fact it was usually at least 40 percent Irish Catholic serving under British Anglican Officers. Given your example those troops should have mutinied at the first sign of battle and killed there officers. There is more to social cohesion than you think.
–Nation building also worked because the Germans and Japanese were bombed the hell out of by our forces. Carpet bombing left indelible marks on those societies. Furthermore they had the pressure of the international communism vs the Soviet Union to deal with. History and context matter as much as traditions of law and order. Iraq had centuries under the lash of the Turk to get a good idea of how law and order worked.
–Then how do you explain Kenya, Viet Nam, Malaya, Indoenesia, Korea, India. I could go on.
–Your solutions would most likely have led to civil war in Iraq. I very much doubt anyone other than the Kurds would have accepted the partition as described. Furthermore I doubt there neighbours would stand by and allow the creation of an independent Kurdistan. Turkey would view that as a direct threat to their territorial integrity (and they would be right too). They would have militarily invaded.
A lot of the reason you had the problems you had was because of the military commanders and their lack of political support and direction from central authority led them to make countless incorrect decisions.
The most important picture in any successful counterinsurgency strategy is working towards a political not military decision. The big picture is the important one. Allowing yourself to be bogged down in constantly invading and clearing the same piece of ground is why you lost. The Surge worked because it involved a political as well as a military solution. It showed that you could do everything your thesis says we cant do. S
We tried Suzerainty in Afghanistan. His name was Karzai. Remember how that went?
Well you have me in agreement with you from a certain standpoint. But I am not going to get into the weeds on Afghanistan. However your strategy for Aghanistan is one I have long advocated for that country.
I will agree that there are lessons to be learned in Iraq and Aghanistan. That the US and its allies made a series of poor choices that exacerbated the problem. That falling back on Fortress America will not work in this interconnected age, and in fact has never worked as anything other than an intellectual debate. That being said we need to have an honest look at what happened and apply the real lessons of history and not let the pet theories of the moment over rule the actual reality on the ground.
Read Cobra II. Iraq was supposed to be a short lived punitive expedition that would have lasted a year. It is because of certain characteristics of the Bush National Security Team that allowed it to drag on and become the quagmire. Read Days of Fire to get a good idea what went wrong at the Strategic Level.
Lets hope this gets some responses.
*Viet Nam was not defeated by the VC as Oliver Stone might have you believe. Viet Nam was conquered by an army from North Viet Nam of over 150000 men using an armored force bigger than the ones used by Germany at Kursk.
The biggest mistake was going in without the will to accomplish the necessary goals of killing the people who needed to be killed, destroying whatever needed to be destroyed, establishing whatever garrison arrangements were necessary to maintaining our interests, and making it clear to whatever tribal leaders were left that if we had to come back, the next time it would be with B-1s and B-52s, and that we knew where they lived and would visit them first.
We lacked the will to see it through.
The bodies of 9/11 weren’t even cold in their graves before the Left forgot all about linking arms and singing God Bless America on the capitol steps and went back to their agendas of self-agrandizement, self-enrichment, and undermining the United States however and whenever they could.
We won in Iraq militarily, then pulled out, now we’re inching back in. We’ve been screwing the pooch in Afghanistan for over 13 years now with no end in sight. Obama’s sole objective seems to be to avoid having anything (else) blow up on his watch and turn the whole stinking cluster-up over to whoever comes after him to deal with. Meanwhile we’re profligately pouring blood and treasure into these sinkholes and it seems like nobody but the military themselves and their families gives a rat’s rear about the price being paid.
Something comes up and you need to pretend you’re doing something about it, like Ebola? Hold a press conference and announce we’re throwing 3,000 troops at it. Then later, changed my mind, up it to 4,000 troops. Still later, changed my mind again, back down to 3,000 troops. Deploy them with screw-all of a plan for what they’re supposed to accomplish. Then forget about them completely.
This is why at least some of us on the “neo-isolationist Right” are opposed to any new military involvement around the world. We don’t really pursue our own interests, we get started then when support fizzles and the country’s attention span flickers onto the next shiny object, the troops are left twisting in the wind.
This is not a game. Until we have real, adult civilian leadership that isn’t going to change direction every election cycle like a bug skittering around on a hot griddle, we should just stay home. In the long run that will be a disaster, but at least we’ll have the disaster without bleeding ourselves white which is what we’re doing now.