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 First, an excerpt of my contribution to the Afghanistan 2050 Roundtable, then from the RT in it’s entirety, so far:

“A Muslim Yugoslavia”

“We snatched anarchy from the jaws of defeat”
                          – Henry Kissinger

Historians tracing the origins of the short but terrible Indo-Punjabistani nuclear exchange of 2024 over the issue of Kashmiri independence generally look to the rapid disintegration of Pakistan into secession, civil war and democide a decade earlier during the conclusion of the “American war” in Afghanistan.

Pakistan had officially been touted as a steadfast ally of the United States during nine years of an American-led campaign against the Taliban insurgency and its al Qaida partners in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal territories, with successive administrations overlooking strong evidence of Pakistani collusion with Taliban leaders. This changed in 2012 when mounting war-weariness at home and an impending presidential election forced President Barack Obama to take more aggressive action to bring the war in Afghanistan to something resembling a “victory”. On September 1st, US forces in Afghanistan under General David Petraeus launched “Operation Iron Emir”, a devastating combined arms “raid” into Pakistan’s tribal territories that routed the Taliban rear areas, effectively annihilated the Haqqani Network, incuding its commander, Sirajuddin Haqqani, along with Hizb-i-Islami, and its notoriously cruel leader, Gulbuddin Hekmetyar, pictures of whose head, decapitated in a 500 lb bomb blast, were splashed across the front page of The New York Times….

Now for the rest:

seydlitz89 – Afghanistan 2050: A Political Watershed

. . . Thus ends our discussion of the military aspects of the Afghan campaign. The political roots of the campaign and how they developed – everyone obviously has their own individual story as to how their own family was affected by the momentous events this war helped to set in motion – are not so easily discernible today. President Bush’s decision to invade the country and overthrow the Taliban government in 2001 seemed a logical response to the events of 11 September, but was in reality predetermined by decades of ideological and political confusion which only came to its inevitable end with the withdrawal of Successor States forces in 2018. In effect American policy makers fancied themselves metaphysicians capable of driving human historical events/the development of political cultures through the use of military power. While the tendency among Bush Studies academics is to argue that Bush represents a unique model followed by his three successors, this puts too much influence on the man and not the times, nor the history which made those times what they were…

selil – Afghanistan 2050: A distributed solution to the distributed problem

Afghanistan history over the last 50 years is a study in the contexts of land locked populations struggling between radical theocracy and criminal ambition. Over the last 50 years we have seen a remarkable set of changes in the political influence and the social impacts of a world changing from petro economy to lithium and thorium as primary energy trade goods. Introducing these topics the following essay describes in detail the radical changes in the world economy and the effects on Afghanistan leading to today in the year 2050….

Trent Telenko – Afghanistan 2050 – Two Sucessful Campaigns in a Wider War

What was determinative in America’s victorious 2001 and 2008 – 2013 Afghanistan military campaigns was the will of the American people to keep the Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist base again. Unlike Vietnam, but like the Second World War, this war was started by a surprise attack on the American people at home. Thus the America people’s definition of “victory” was security at home, whatever games America’s ruling elite of the time were doing to either make the goal more or less than that definition.

Shane – Afghanistan 2050: Kaleidoscope of History

….It is ironic that the colonial powers of the west thought they could tame Afghanistan. The first memories of my youth were of my brave brothers and uncles taking arms against the Soviet tanks that sought to prop up the urban elites of Babrak Karmal and his fellow kleptocrats. And as a young man, I watched the ignorant Taliban Kandaharis try to impose their misguided interpretation of Shari’a on our peoples – only to be quickly ousted by the Americans and their corrupt puppet Hamid Karzai. And in my middle age I witnessed the ebb and flow of various outsiders – from Europeans to Pakistanis to Chinese – try to impose their centralized governances on us. At least until the development of sub-Saharan Africa gave them all a new sandbox to attempt to shape in their own image, leaving us to our own “archaic” ways….

T. Greer – Afghansistan 2050: Futures That Will Not Be

….Consider the stakes the United States has in Central Asia. For the past twenty years America’s policy for the region has been fairly straight forward: lend support to would-be democratic revolutionaries, contain the Russians, and do everything possible to increase America’s political influence and military presence in region. As the vanguard of the color revolutions begin to show their true autocratic colors it has become clear that this policy was a mistake. The Sino-Soviet split was one of the greatest strategic coups of the Cold War; today’s active intervention in Central Asia threatens to reverse what the diplomats of a generation past worked so hard to achieve. The interests of the United States could in few ways be better served than if China and Russia were jostling for strategic influence in Central Asia. The American presence in the region assures that this will never happen. Instead of competing in a new great game the two are drawn together to kick the imperial outsider out of their mutual backyard.

Lexington Green – Afghanistan: 40 years is a long time

This poster is meant to be funny, but it is tragic.

These pictures tell a thousand word tale of utter destruction.

Dr. David Ronfeldt – Afghanistan 2050: Tribes vs. Networks

“Because of the way U.S. forces pulled back in the Teens and wars ensued in the 20s and 30s, debates continue as to whether we won or lost over there. Yet, what matters more for this quadriform theory of social evolution is the following: The persistent grip of the tribal form of organization – and thus local resistance to allowing the institutional (statist) and market forms to take hold properly – explains what unfolded in the region and why so little could be changed. At least we finally stemmed the jihadis efforts to spread their monoform religious tribalism elsewhere. But we’ve done less well at our deeper challenge here at home and abroad: adapting to the wrenching rise of the newest of the four forms – the information-age network form

Matthew Borton – Afghanistan 2050: Effects of the US Conflict

American forces withdrew at the end of 2015, leaving only a token force for training oversight. A short bloody civil war ensued with a faction of the Islamic extremists affiliated with the original Taliban quickly retaking the government. They consolidated their power over the next five years, bringing isolated tribal groups under control with an extreme interpretation of sharì’a law. Afghans see this turn of events not as a return to a life of repression, or even a triumph for Islam, but as a victory over another in a series of invading states and the triumph of nationalists over subjugation to a foreign nation under the regime of a puppet government

Fringe – Frustration, Apathy, and Futility

Are the real reasons that great powers quit Afghanistan.

This is an especially hard, but important lesson to learn. Like many lessons of military history, it is best learned vicariously.

The current US situation in Afghanistan sheds a bright light on the Soviet experience, and transforms a different narrative from implausible to obvious.

Dr. Steven Metz – “…America’s Afghanistan strategy, with its flawed assumptions, is badly out of balance.”

I’m currently reading Andrew Bacevich’s new book Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War. He contends that at the end of Vietnam, there was a moment when the United States could have veered away from the “Washington rules” which had developed since the 1940s-militarism, the definition of instability anywhere as a threat to American security, a poor understanding of non-Western cultures, and so forth. But it didn’t.

I truly believe that Afghanistan, coming on the heels of Iraq, will provide another such moment. And I hope we take it.

James C. Bennet- Afghanistan 2050: A Travel Guide

….Arrival in storied Kabul was exciting, but, on walkabout, the first impression of the city was a bit of a letdown. So much of it has been rebuilt since the Times of Troubles that it now for the most part resembles any other Chinese city, and the crowds on the busy streets generally have the faces you would see in Shanghai, Beijing, or Lhasa. Indeed, if you are looking for the famous veiled faces or turban-clad national minorities, you must go to the Minorities Quarter, where several blocks have been restored in the traditional minority style – even a mosque! (Although the call to prayer was merely an automatic sound file played by a helpful policeman-guide.) Ironically, you will see more Tibetans on the streets than Pashtuns, since many Tibetans have taken advantage of the lower altitudes and cheap housing available in Kabul these days. It is easier to get good Tibetan momo dumplings now in Kabul than the traditional lamb and rice dishes associated with the area…

Cheryl Rofer – Afghanistan 2050: The Game-Changer

The Afghanistan War, 2001 – 2011
The Pakistan floods of August 2010 were the turning point. Very quietly, South Africa’s Ambassador Abdul S. Minty detached himself from an International Atomic Energy Agency delegation visiting Israel to deliver a letter from Nelson Mandela to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (Appendix XIX; reproduced at the end of this post). The letter urged Netanyahu to lead an effort to bring aid to Pakistan. The stated purpose was to improve Israel’s image in the world and its relations with Turkey in particular, but Mandela’s intention also was to distract Netanyahu and Israel more generally from its fixation on Iran’s nuclear program.

Joseph Fouche – Afghanistan 2050: The Future’s Just Not That Into You

EEvn beefoor thu 80 Yeerz ‘ Woor ended, selfkonfidenz fyuuld bii FIL luld 3 Reepublik intuu unuthr rownd uv intrvenshnz, thoo theez reemaand dwoorft bii thu intrvenshnz uv thu preeceedng rownd. Startng with Grenaadu (BR43), this finl rownd inkluuded intrventshnz in thu fyuuchr KPS (SAU (BR46-BR37), Gron Kooloombeeu (BR37), Ispanyoolu (BR32)) az wel az owtsiid it (EEtheeoopeeu (BR35-BR34, BR25-BR15), Srveeu (BR31-BR14), Midl EEzt (BR43-BR44, BR36-BR15), sentrl Wrld IIland (BR25-BR14)). Az 2 Reepublikz‘ fiinl intrvenshnz ended aftr 2 Korekshn, 3 Reepublikz‘ fiinl intrvenshnz ended aftr 3 Korekshn. Thu xpeereeunz uv theez intrvenshnz, howevr, led tuu frthr deevelopmentz in popuulaashn kontrool and roobotikz.
 

–  Birth and Deth uv 3 Republiks, R21

[Legacy encoding: Even before the Eighty Years’ War ended, self-confidence fueled by FIL lulled the Third Republic into another round of interventions, though these remained dwarfed by the interventions of the preceding round. Starting with Grenada (BR43), this final round included interventions in the future CPZ  (CAU (BR46-BR37, Gran Colombia (BR37), Hispaniola (BR32)) as well as outside it (Ethiopia (BR35-BR34 and BR25-BR15), Servia (BR31-BR14), the Middle East (BR43-BR44, BR36-BR15), central World Island (BR25-BR14)). As the Second Republic’s final interventions ended after the Second Correction, the Third Republic’s final interventions ended after the Third Correction. The experience of these interventions, however, led to further developments in population control and robotics.

– Birth and Death of Three Republics, R21]

Dr. Daniel Abbott –Afghanistan in 2050: The Long Type of Time

The American victory in Afghanistan would be short lived, owing to the efforts of the progressives. The stable, secure, and democratic Afghanistan inaugurated by President Obama was soon undermined by activists to his left. The Karzai government was unable to acquire the weapon systems that it needed to defend itself, and was soon swept away in all but name. To this day, the Afghanistan War is a lesson of the hollowness of military victory when the enemy has already infiltrated the nation’s capital.
The Story of the United States, 1776-2026, Beck Academic Books.
 
American imperialism ran aground in Afghanistan, like it ran aground in Vietnam two generations before. Attempts by the globo-capitalists in the Obama Administration to subjugate the Afghan people quickly backfired, as popular movements swept across the countryside. Of course, given Afghanistan’s unique history, many of these movements garbed themselves in the robe of the religion that is native to the region. The enormous might of the military-industrial complex was once again unable to overcome the will of the people- both American and Afghani – for peace.
The American People: Triumphs and Tragedies, the Yearly Kos Press.

Fringe – The Exit Strategy Fantasy

The principle cause of the failed US strategy in Afghanistan was the contemporary fascination with a fantasy called ‘exit strategy’. Wars arise from conflicts of interest so substantial that nations are willing to resort to force of arms to impose their will and achieve their strategic objectives.  Once victory has been attained on the battlefield, ongoing threat of military force is usually necessary to prevent eruption of more hostilities. For the majority of US history, its political and military leaders understood that victory in war would allow the US to impose its strategic will on the conquered, and would require occupation for as long as the casus belli remained relevant.

Lexington Green – America in Afghanistan: Looking Back From 2050

… It is impossible to ever know the total number of lives lost, but world population certainly fell by over two billion by 2029. … The stereoimage of the first Chinese Pope, John Paul IV, embracing Zeng Hongzhang, Chairman of the New Righteousness United Evangelical Churches of China, both barefoot and clad in a plain brown robes, at the convening of the Pilgrimage Out of Darkness in New Beijing (November 2029), is the popular symbol of the beginning of the New Sanity Era. …
 
… With the universal re-accession of all American States, Territories, Free Zones, Free Cities and New Hansa Zones to the Restored Old Constitution, all are now signatories to the Anglosphere Network Commonwealth Heritage Association Pact of 2041. ANCHA brought an end to the unpopular legal prohibition of all positive depiction of the American military. The roaring public demand for TI (total immersion) products based on US military history continues unabated … .

There will be an update later today of Afghanistan-Pakistan related posts from bloggers and academics not participating in the RT but who are raising interesting or germane POV.

Two items worthy of attention before I move on to other posts:

Adam Elkus and John Sullivan –  Strategy and insurgency: an evolution in thinking?

….As state-building is increasingly questioned, COIN is likely to return to its roots in small-scale foreign internal defense (FID) missions, the more narrow concept of “countering irregulars,” gathering intelligence for strikes, and “flying” police squads like the kind employed by British irregular warfare pioneer Orde Wingate in the 1930s. Since counterinsurgency is largely a military activity carried out by military forces, the principal emphasis in past COIN operations has been countering irregular forces with military force.  Even in the operations of police in a COIN role in countering criminal insurgency the ultimate goal is, as Clausewitz noted, forcing the adversary to accept the state’s political will. Confusion about COIN occurs because of the political role of COIN in American strategy, not necessarily the history of COIN doctrine itself. 

Well said.

I have to wonder if our national allergy to grappling honestly with the political dimensions military operations ( or for that matter, the political dimensions of any kind of governmental policy, foreign or domestic) will improve when the Boomers and their obsession with Vietnam and the Sixties pass from the scene with retirement and death? Will Gen X mirror the hard eyed pragmatism of Eisenhower and Truman’s generation when they start coming in to power positions in about ten years or will they follow the political correctness/culture wars myopia of the Boomers?

Dr. Robert J. Bunker – The Ugly Truth: Insurgencies are Brutal

Speaking of Vietnam….. 

….The crux of the problem is that democracies loathe being involved in insurgencies. They are nasty, brutish, and have a bad habit of being very drawn out. Afghanistan is now the longest U.S. ‘war’ on record if we can call it such. Both blood and treasure are often expended for no perceivable reason and, at times, no clear cut distinction exists between the good guys and the bad guys when loyalty can be bought and paid for in hard cash. Accountability can be non-existent and despotic and corrupt regimes gleefully siphon off U.S. aid to enrich themselves, their families, and their cronies. Hamid Karzai is in some ways a Ngo Dinh Diem or Nguyen Van Thieu redux. Memories of Vietnam are never far from the surface when insurgency becomes the topic of table discussion. In fact, Vietnam is an excellent touchstone with regard to the sheer brutality surrounding an insurgency. Richard Schultz published a 1978 work on terrorism, insurgency warfare, and the Viet Cong. Key statistical information on targeted killings, kidnappings, and the brutality of the conflict in Vietnam is as follows:

• Between 1958 and 1965, approximately 36,800 kidnappings and 9,700 assassinations occurred in South Vietnam
• …during 1957 (the year given most frequently for the serious expansion of the NLF insurgency) a total of 472 officials were assassinated. This figure doubled during 1958-1959 and during the early 1960’s. The NLF eliminated on the average of fifteen GVN officials a week
• In May 1961, Kennedy sent a “Special message to Congress” in which he attributed NLF success to “guerillas striking at night, assassins striking alone-assassins who have taken the lives of over 4000 civil officers in the last 12 months…by subversives and saboteurs and insurrectionists, who in some cases control whole areas inside of independent nations.”1

There will be a number of posts later today, here and also at Chicago Boyz for the Afghanistan 2050 Roundtable.

I have but two recommended readings this week but they are both very good. I say “week” because I am going to be mostly offline for the next seven to ten days and will only have time to sporadically check in, so posting will be extremely light. My email response will also be, I say with all candor, very poor except for the most urgent business.

Scholar’s Stage – Notes on the Dynamics of Human Civilization: The Growth Revolution, Part I

My primary historic interest lies with the civilizations of the classical age. The world of Asoka, Shi Huangdi, and Scipio Africanus is a fascinating one, and the modern world would be a better place if our current caste of world leaders studied the lessons of these ancient days. However, the more I study these periods the more I realize that the world we live in is a fundamentally different place than that of our axial forbearers. This fact is little appreciated and (most likely) little understood by most commentators. There are clear limitations to the lessons we can learn from times past. If we do not understand the dynamics by which these societies operated and the ways in which these dynamics differ from those of the modern world, comparisons between the two will do more harm than good. 

On the broadest terms, the history of humanity can be divided into three periods. The first begins with the evolution of modern humans c. 50,000 years ago and ends with the advent of sedentary society (c. 11,500 years ago – Gobelki Tepe being the marker of this first transition). This was a world without civilization. Complex societies (used interchangeably with “civilization” in this post) have only existed for a fifth of humanity’s existence. While but a small part of human history in toto, it is these last 11,500 years that are the object of our study.

Human civilization has gone through two stages. The first of these stages is the longest, beginning with the emergence of complex societies in the Near East c. 11,500 years ago and ending only at the beginning of the 19th century. I submit that every society of this period- from the first chiefdoms to the great empires of Rome and China – operated under the same basic structural constraints. The rules and limitations were the same; the differences were a matter of emphasis and scale. This changes at the turn of the 19th century. Humanity’s third great period begins here (it has not yet ended). The rules by which the modern world operates are incredibly different from those of the old order. The transformation wrought by modernization was no less revolutionary than that wrought by the advent of complex society 11,000 years previous.

This revolution is widely recognized, but also grossly mischaracterized. The standard label for this transition is the “Industrial Revolution.” This title is misleading. The industrialization of the world economy was the result, not the cause of modernization. The nature of this radical transformation is captured better by a different title: The Growth RevolutionThe info graphics tell the story better than I do….

A tour de force post by T. Greer ( Hat tip to Joseph Fouche)

The Glittering Eye:

Dave Schuler is one of my oldest (and smartest) blogfriends and we have here from him a series on the struggling economy and contours of American society

The Breakdown
The Breakdown: The Young Aren’t Getting Enough Education
The Breakdown: Education Is More Necessary Than Ever
The Breakdown: Baby Boomers Have Higher Incomes

The Breakdown: Age and Employment

….Since the start of the current recession (or previous recession if you’re in the financial industry), we’ve read an almost constant stream of analyses, critiques, prognostications, and laments on the state of the economy. The preponderance of these took a sort of econophysics point of view, a view from 30,000 feet in which forces applied had deterministic outcomes. Local, regional, cultural, or demographic differences tend to be ignored.

I don’t think this view of behavioral or social phenomena is realistic and over the last few years I’ve repeatedly emphasized the local variants in the economic downturn and how that tends to obscure what’s actually going on nationally. Today I’m going to try to come up with an explanation of the changes in the economy that focuses on our changing demographics, particularly the differences among age cohorts. We’ll see how far I get.

A good place to start is with the graphic above. That’s what’s called the “age pyramid” for 2010. There are bars for each five year age cohort. The number of men for each cohort is shown on the left and the number of women on the right. It’s a straightforward visual snapshot that captures the country’s age and gender demographics in an eye-catching manner….

RECOMMENDED VIEWING:

“Genius is above all rules” – Carl von Clausewitz

“Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.” – Eric Hoffer

An intriguing, thought-provoking and frequently on-target paper by Dr. Anna Simons of SSI  (hat tip to SWJ Blog). First the summary excerpt and then some comments:

Got Vision? Unity of Vision in Policy and Strategy: What It Is and Why We Need It (PDF)

….Moving beyond “unity of effort” and “unity of command,” this monograph identifies an overarching need for “unity of vision.” Without someone at the helm who has a certain kind–not turn, not frame, but kind–of mind, asymmetric confrontations will be hard (if not impossible) to win. If visionary generals can be said to possess “coup d’oeil,” then unity of vision is cross-cultural coup d’oeil. As with strategic insight, either individuals have the ability to take what they know of another society and turn this to strategic–and war-winning–effect, or they do not. While having prior knowledge of the enemy is essential, strategy will also only succeed if it fits “them” and fits “us.” This means that to convey unity of vision a leader must also have an intuitive feel for “us.”

[ For the readers for whom military strategic terminology is unfamiliar, “coup d’ oeil” is an instant, intuitive, situational understanding of the military dynamics in their geographic setting. The great commanders of history, Alexander, Caesar, Belisarius, Napoleon – had it]

The key concept  here is “visionary generals” creating a mutually shared “general vision” of policy and its strategic execution. While military figures who hold high command – Eisenhower, MacArthur, Petreaus – are obvious examples, technically, it doesn’t have to be a “general” in immediate combat command, so much as the final “decider”. A figure whose authority is part autocrat and part charsmatic auctoritas. Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill epitomized this role, as did George Marshall, the orgainizer and architect of the Allied victory in WWII. On a less exalted scale, we see Edward Lansdale (cited by Simons) or Thomas Mann, LBJ’s behind the scenes, Latin America “policy czar” during the Dominican Crisis of 1965. 

Simons is arguing for finding “great men” of strategy rather than explaining how to contruct a strategic vision per se. There is a very strong emphasis here of successful strategy as an act of great creativity, with the strategist as a master artist of force and coercion, imposing their will on allies and the enemy to shape the outcome of events. Colonel John Collins, wrote of this article by Dr. Simons at his Warlord Loop:

Be aware that the following article is NOT about unity of vision. It is about visionaries who convinced a majority that their vision was the best available policy at a given time and place in a certain set of circumstances. Implementing plans, programs, and operations follow. Most successful visionaries indeed must be supersalespersons, because priceless theories and concepts otherwise gather dust.  

I agree. There’s a combination of actions here – strategic thought, proselytizing the vision, competent execution, empirical assessment and strategic adjustment – that feeds back continuously (or at least, it should). While Simons argues her point well and draws on several case studies from India from which I learned new things, there is a flaw in one of her premises:

Take Andrew Krepinevich’s and Barry Watts’s recent assertion that it is “past time to recognize that not everyone has the cognitive abilities and insight to be a competent strategist.”4 As they note, “strategy is about insight, creativity, and synthesis.”5 According to Krepinevich and Watts, “it appears that by the time most individuals reach their early twenties, they either have developed the cognitive skills for strategy or they have not.”6 As they go on to write:

If this is correct, then professional education or training are unlikely to inculcate a capacity for genuine strategic insight into most individuals, regardless of their raw intelligence or prior experience. Instead, the best anyone can do is to try to identify those who appear to have developed this talent and then make sure that they are utilized in positions calling for the skills of a strategist.7

Mark Moyar concurs. The point he makes again and again in his new book, A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq, is that “counter-insurgency is ‘leader-centric’ warfare, a contest between elites in which the elite with superiority in certain leadership attributes usually wins.”8

Watts and Krepinevich are statistically correct regarding the rarity of strategic thinking and are probably largely correct regarding the effects of professional military education and the career path of most military officers. They are most likely wrong on the causation of the lack of strategic thinking ability. It is not exclusively a matter of winning the genetic lottery or losing it at age thirty, cognitively we are what we frequently do. Discourage a large number of people by regulation or culture from taking the initiative and making consequential choices and you will ultimately have a group bereft of strategic thought. Or possibly, thought.

As with most professionals, military officers tend to be vertical thinkers, or what Howard Gardner in Extraordinary Minds calls “Masters” – as they rise in rank, they acquire ever greater expertise over a narrower and more refined and esoteric body of professional knowledge. This tendency toward insularity and specialization, analysis and reductionism is the norm in a 20th century, modern, hierarchical institutional culture of which the US military is but one example.

However, if you educate differently, force officers out of their field (presumably into something different from military science but still useful in an adjunctive sense), the conceptual novelty will promote horizontal thinking, synthesis and insight – cognitive building blocks for strategic thinking. While we should value and promote those with demonstrated talent for strategic thinking we can also do a great deal more to educate our people to be good strategists.