I’ve been looking at the rise of “counterinsurgency” theory first to prominence, then to some influence in the Bush administration, and then via CNAS to influence within the Democratic Party and now the Obama Pentagon with a mix of hope and anxiety. Hope because I think the COIN mindset is a smarter way to think [...]
I’ve been looking at the rise of “counterinsurgency” theory first to prominence, then to some influence in the Bush administration, and then via CNAS to influence within the Democratic Party and now the Obama Pentagon with a mix of hope and anxiety. Hope because I think the COIN mindset is a smarter way to think about 21st century security challenges than what you get from F–22 salesmen masquerading as strategists, but anxiety because it also sometimes seems to open the door to a vast new array of misbegotten imperialist adventures. So when Justin Logan recommended Andrew Bacevich’s skeptical take on the new memoir from COIN guru David Kilcullen I paid attention. But even more interesting than Bacevich’s take on Kilcullen was CNAS fellow and counterinsurgent Andrew Exum’s take on Bacevich’s take on Kilcullen:
One of the things I have always maintained is that realists of the Andrew Bacevich school and counter-insurgents of the David Kilcullen school have more in common than they realize at first glance. No one who really understands COIN wants to do it. Liberal interventionalists and neo-conservatives are likely to be much more enthusiastic than the practitioners themselves. Counter-insurgents, often knowing something of what they speak through practical and hard-won experience, realize all too well just how difficult and costly big schemes drawn up in Washington become when they have to be operationalized. Counter-insurgency is hard. Best to avoid it, actually.
I’m torn between wanting to write “I think this is true” and wanting to write “I hope this is true.” But the fact that Exum, who’s on the inside of the COIN clique looking out, is writing it makes me more hopeful that it actually is true. It’s always seemed to me that the clear implication of giving due consideration to the issue of how to eat soup with a knife is that you should do your damn best to avoid putting yourself in that kind of situation. In other words, if at all possible find something else to eat.
But at the same time that this has seemed to me to be the clear implication, I’ve also worried that actual practitioners may be disinclined to draw the implication in practice. After all, active engagement in counterinsurgency operations tends to boost demand for counterinsurgency experts while a foreign policy that aimed to avoid such scenarios might reach the conclusion that it can afford to simply ignore the subject. Thus you could see a certain structural bias in COIN circles toward wanting to see COIN-needed situations lurking under every rock.
The ongoing Afghanistan strategic review process will, I think, be a practical test of whether or not Exum’s ideas about a realist/counterinsurgent synthesis can be made to work. It seems to me that it’s a scenario in which we need to simultaneously apply COINish insights about the tactics employed by our troops (relying on manpower rather than firepower, seeing public opinion as a key center of gravity, etc.) with realist insights about the need to set priorities, define interests, and establish realistic goals. There’s a big risk of tumbling too far into one side or another—either pulling back and just lobbing occasional bombs at bad guys in a manner that radicalizes the entire population, or else committing ourselves to an unnecessary and probably impossible decades-long effort to build a modern state structure in Afghanistan.
I think we’ll see soon enough how well the administration does on this score, but the blogging lifestyle has turned me into an impatient person.
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