cost of afghan war to pak

8/10/2019 Cost of Afghan War to Pak

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cost of Afghan war to Pak

Small wars, big prices

By Peter J. Munson Friday, January 27, 2012 - 5:27 PM Share

Insurgency and counterinsurgency have become topics of great debate recently. The end of

our adventure in Iraq, the drawdown in Afghanistan, and the hovering budget axe havecreated a perfect storm in the defense establishment as competing worldviews, ideologies,and interests jostle for position in the post-Global War on Terror years. The debate over

counterinsurgency has become particularly heated, as various parties not only conduct a

postmortem on the tactics and operational art of recent conflicts, but also seek to findclosure (and perhaps fault for mistakes made and incredible losses of life and treasure over

the last decade). The wounds, real and recent, inject vitriol to the debate.

More importantly, however, the tactical focus of the debate mirrors the incredible myopia of

our conduct of these wars. The most astute participants in these debates understand thatour errors start and end at the strategic level, but this is often lost in the fray. What are not

discussed sufficiently, if at all, are the bureaucratic and political determinants of strategyand policy failure and success. Before arguing about counterinsurgency as a tactic or a

strategy, we must first acknowledge a key point: America did not enter any of these wars(going back to Vietnam) as a counterinsurgent or a nation-builder. America entered these

wars with ill-defined strategic goals, the result of lowest common denominator bureaucratic

negotiations. These goals were not sufficiently thought out, clearly stated, or properlysubscribed to by the government writ large, resulting in nearly immediate drift. This factshould point us toward the true roots of the problem.

When it comes to small wars, American national security decision-making institutionspredispose the nation to failure. America tends to involve itself in conflicts with insufficient

resources and ill-defined aims, expand its commitments based on continually changing

policies, and run out of public support before these adventures have run their course. Thisfamiliar trajectory has played out most prominently, and tragically in Vietnam, Afghanistan,

and Iraq. But the model applies to many smaller interventions, such as those in Somalia inthe 1990s and Lebanon in the 1980s, as well. This tragic arc results in large part from theinteraction between the messy reality of bureaucratic and domestic political wrangling. Andwhile the military professes detachment from politics, military leaders are charged with

advocating policy in their role as military advisors to civilian leaders and public figures in an

age of immediate, global media coverage. Thus, military plans are created withoutconsidering the political realities that will shape their implementation and are doomed tofailure once churned through the sausage machine that is government.

Adding to the confusion is that the barrier to entry in these "small wars" is relatively low.Combat power stands ready in the form of an unparalleled, standing volunteer military with

nearly instant global reach. As long as no significant reserve call-up or economic

mobilization is needed, the commander-in-chief is relatively unhindered in committing this

force to combat. Despite the War Powers Act of 1973, the constitutional validity of which noPresident has ever acknowledged, Presidents have been relatively unhindered in initiating

hostilities. At the same time, the widely accepted "end of history" worldview of policy elitesof all stripes (here I refer not only to Fukuyama's work, but the much broader legacyreaching back to Hegel, Kant, and even St. Augustine) gives American policy a liberal

interventionist bent. This narrative suggests that sovereignty can (and in some cases must)

be abrogated in order to set states on the road to liberal democracy and thus a peaceful"end of history." While America's professional volunteer military is removed from politics, itsnarratives as a "Global Force for Good" and the nation's "Force in Readiness," for example,


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predispose leaders to liberal interventionist impulses. In any case, when policy-makers ask

military advisors what can be done to deal with a given problem, these action-oriented

people are loath to say there are no good military options.

Thus, for all the stock elites put in the democratic peace theory, the United States enterssmall wars by fiat, sidestepping the democratic peace theory's prediction that democracies

will eschew war to solve their problems. The President is torn between the dictates ofnational security, the cautions of domestic politics, and the often expansive outlooks of

policy advisors. The imperative to "do something" is often strong, but so is the imperative toretain freedom of action by keeping the opening gambit low. While the military has an

incentive to reduce operational risk by opening as decisively as possible (think "shock and

awe"), military leaders are often quite optimistic about their ability to use technology andtactics, especially overwhelming air and missile capabilities, to offset the risk presented by

low force levels. Faced with these competing imperatives, the negotiations of the President,

the military, Congress, and the other elements of the national security decision-makingapparatus result in a lowest common denominator solution. Despite these constraints, oncewe cross the Rubicon, decision-makers' mindsets make a switch to a more aggressive,

optimistic, and risk-accepting mode: if we are going to implement the plan, we must

implement it aggressively and we will prevail. This implemental mindset results in accepting

minimalist options with optimistic assumptions.

The effect of the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 on the diversity of military advice plays intothese negotiations, as well. In making the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the singularvoice of military advice to the President, the act made dissent far more difficult. While the

legislation specifies that service chiefs may register dissenting opinions, the reality of

bureaucratic politics is such that dissent may be unwelcome, especially as people switch intoan implemental mindset. Additionally, the act removes the chairman and the Joint Chiefsfrom the operational chain of command, which runs from the President, through the

Secretary of Defense, to the combatant commander. These issues played out in the run-upto war in Iraq in 2003. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Central CommandCommander General Tommy Franks were happy with a transformational, light-footprint

invasion of Iraq. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Meyers, an Air Forceofficer, agreed with the "shock and awe" campaign design and its transformational lightfootprint. Only Gen Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff of the Army, publically disagreed duringCongressional testimony, suggesting that a much larger footprint of several hundred

thousand troops was required to deal with the aftermath of regime decapitation. Shinseki'stestimony was disavowed by the administration and he soon retired, but subsequent eventswould suggest that more attention should have been paid to this dissenting view.

Bureaucratic and political factors are driven well into the background when the gravity ofthe situation and the dictates of core national interest illuminate the way ahead. Forexample, the attack on Pearl Harbor turned skepticism about U.S. involvement in the

Second World War into virtually universal agreement on decisive commitment and,ultimately, unconditional victory. In more peripheral cases, such as Vietnam, Iraq,

Afghanistan, Somalia, and other small wars, bureaucratic and political factors are far morelikely to be dominant.

What is more, the general public is less informed and aware of the issues surrounding these

small wars, leading to passivity. These factors predispose a low level of commitment sold to

the public by understating the likely costs and overstating the prospects for success. Insmall wars, the press transmits this overselling to foreign audiences, severely impairing themessaging required to "win hearts and minds." Almost inevitably, escalation is soon

required. The state sheepishly returns to the populace again and again to explain the new


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way ahead and to ask for more time, more resources, and more patience. This sales method

ensures that policies change frequently and desperately, with each shift in course seemingly

based on a previous failure. McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to PresidentsKennedy and Johnson, said as much of perceptions of Vietnam policy. There should be little

wonder in the fact that the populace begins to lose patience and register its discontent.This, after all, is what the democratic peace theory is all about. Democratic nations are not

fond of protracted wars they can avoid.

Once the public begins to wake to the level of commitment being made without theirinformed consent (it is important here to note that this is not only due to the manipulations

of the political class, but to the apathy of a public not invested materially or personally in

the wars America has fought recently), the clamor for accountability and withdrawal isinevitable. This adds to the disparate forces pulling policy in different directions and is the

root of the now-familiar strategic drift. While the tactical, cultural, and historical

circumstances of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan are quite different, the policy muddle hasbeen quite consistent.

The problem is that even if consensus could be reached regarding how to conduct small

wars, these steps would likely not be faithfully implemented. The mistakes we make in

these wars, after all, are not for a lack of knowledge, but an inability to produce coherentand logical strategy and policy due to the inherent defects and conflicts in our national

security decision-making bureaucracy. In an ideal world, we would be able to use diplomaticand military instruments to predictably manage complex human interactions. Even withperfect institutions and unitary, enlightened decision-making, this would be a questionable

prospect at best. Given the inherent tensions built into America's institutions, the ability to

successfully wage small wars of peripheral interest is nil. It took months, if not years, forthese institutions to admit that America was even facing an insurgency in Vietnam, Iraq, orAfghanistan, much less begin to implement a strategy designed to counter the roots of

these insurgencies.

Given this analysis, the most logical way to deal with this conundrum is to raise the bar for

entry into conflict. If American leadership is forced to make a more honest accounting of thecosts, it will enter fewer conflicts. While perceptions of natural interest can be manipulated,those conflicts entered after truly counting the costs are likelier to be of greater interest tothe nation, and the nation will, in theory, provide something much closer to the ways and

means required to meet the desired ends.

As George Kennan wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1985, "A first step along the path of morality

would be the frank recognition of the immense gap between what we dream of doing and

what we really have to offer, and a resolve, conceived in all humility, to take ourselvesunder control and to establish a better relationship between our undertakings and our realcapabilities."

Politicians and the American public are today far more acutely sensitive to budgetary issues

than they were a decade ago, which may make them more cautious about the propensity ofmission creep in the future. However, while this mindset may circumscribe the ways and

means, the ends sought are, if anything, more expansive than ever before. The liberalideals of the postwar order, the quest for the end of history in a utopia of democratic peace,

and the imperative of human rights and dignity have policymakers turning more frequently

to military force to remake societies and politics. This abrogation of sovereignty in thepursuit of universal ideals harks back to the pre-Westphalian wars of religion, whichexplains some of the fervor behind conflict today. Strategic thinkers both inside and outside

the military must give more consideration to the constraints laid out here, rather than


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assuming or wishing away their crippling effects. This is not an invitation for the military to

become involved in politics, but only to understand and account for how politics will affect

their freedom of action. Ignoring these effects is like ignoring the terrain or weather,marching thousands of miles into a barren plain while ignoring the reality that winter is soon

to come.

Peter J. Munson is a Marine officer, Editor of Small Wars Journal, and the author of Iraq inTransition: The Legacy of Dictatorship and the Prospects for Democracy. The views here are

his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Marine Corps or Department of Defense.

cost of afghan war to pak

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