Further Links to the Post-COIN Era
To take a fairly recent example, Sean McFate’s call to purge the Afghanistan National Army is (to this citizen’s untrained eye) operationally sound. Yet however operationally sound it may or may not be, it could happen only in policy fantasy land. The ANA is the result of eight years of sweat and toil; you cannot simply scrap it and start all over as you would flip a switch. Who shall fork money over to ISAF to perform such a restructure? Which country is going to stay in Afghanistan for another eight years while the new ANA is formed, trained, and battle hardened? Most importantly, are the citizens of those states whose soldiers compose the ISAF ready to recommit themselves and their countrymen to a reboot of the entire project?
These questions were left untouched by McFate. Like most folks discussing COIN, small budgets, restless constituents, and domestic politcking belonged to a realm worlds away. This is no longer true. The time soon approaches when all members of the defense community will be forced to deal with Washington’s political realities – COINdistas included.
Eric Martin –The Real Vietnam Syndrome « American Footprints
Martin counsels restraint and an end to a period of “conservative internationalism” of heroic ambitions based on miserly expenditures:
….While true, the essential lesson from recent foreign policy failures, the realization that COIN is not a panacea (and an expensive tool to wield regardless) and the underwhelming results from the serial mismatch of ambitious goals with limited means under the doctrine of conservative internationalism (and its liberal cousins) is that foreign policy adventurism is too expensive. Attempts to conceal its costs have failed, and purported fixes are themselves enormous commitments that likely outpace the strategic necessity. This is especially true at a time when the United States has limited resources that are declining relative to the rest of the world, with mounting domestic needs.
Rather than persist in undertaking interventionist policies that are doomed – if not to failure, at least to underachievement – from the onset due to a lack of necessary resources, and rather than dedicating a fortune and a half chasing COIN phantoms of limited relative value and dubious prospects for success, the United States would be far better served to limit its military interventions to only those that are truly vital and necessary. In contemporary terms, that means, at the least, no military confrontation with Iran, and extreme caution and circumspection with respect to any proposed increased involvement in places like Yemen.
I will also again recommend that you visit Dr. Marc Tyrell and Pundita on this subject, if you have not done so already. Pundita for her blend of analysis and stiletto-like sarcasm and Dr. Tyrell for his brainy use of big words that make my head hurt.
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Ed Beakley:
January 27th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Mark, first great original post bringing out some very intriguing comments. As you might expect, I have commented on my own site in context – mentioned by several of your responders – of von Clausewitz’s dictate to determine first the kind of war you’re in. To me, the COIN debate and future must be grounded there.
As you have explained, and in the way I first read the post, I did not interpret your comments as did Dr. Barnett. Despite that, his comments added some areas to consider in terms of how war, warfare, methods are considered/might be considered in various contexts and organizations.
Finally, you note the link at Small Wars Journal, but at least to me a more relevant dialogue there might be the article War, “Like War”, or Something Else?
by Colonel Robert Killebrew.