Whatever happened to the Long War? I rather liked it, as a counter to the instant gratification that I, and many others, are susceptible to. Every day brings new stories, new punditry, from which babble it’s hard to discern much in the way of long term trend. In the NYRB, Rory Stewart has a long essay on Afghanistan, in which he likens Obama to a poker player who chooses to call, rather than raise the stakes or fold. Obama is playing for time, seeing which way things shape up. Stewart likes that, and so do I. He writes that
those who [raise or fold] are anxious to leave the table. They go all in to exit, hoping to get lucky but if not then at least to finish. They do not do this on the basis of their cards or the pot. They do it because they lack the patience, the interest, the focus, or the confidence to pace themselves carefully through the long and exhausting hours. They no longer care enough about the game. Obama is a famously keen poker player. He should never be in a hurry to leave the table.
For Bruce Hoffman, writing in mid-2009, the Long War has
unfortunately fallen out of fashion, [but] its fundamental premise is unassailable: the U.S. is likely to still be fighting the war on terrorism, countering insurgency, and involved in nation-building efforts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere for at least the next decade or more.
That seems right to me. The view is often that the public needs results now, lest support for Afghanistan fall through the floor. Politicians increasingly seek short term results – we must see dramatic improvements by next year, the year after most definitely. Or what?
As a society, we have the patience for long conflict at this scale – these wars have been a constant background rumble since 2001. The polling numbers are bad, but they’ve long been bad, and it hasn’t made much of a difference in the day-to-day politics of the UK. The Lib Dems will not sweep to election victory on the back of an anti-war manifesto, next year or any time soon.
I have increasing doubts about the maximalist view of societal transformation promised by large-scale COIN, but staying in the game need not mean keeping things as they are. In the meantime, isn’t Stewart, a long-time sceptic about our efforts to reinvent Afghanistan, right to counsel patience and commitment?
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
great post
‘Long War’, as you say, might be useful in one way as an antidote to impatient visions of the conflict that were rampant in 2001 and then 2003, as a rapid political transformation at the end of a spear, of the Arab-Islamic world.
On the other hand, like ‘war on terror’, it still suffers from the basic defect: it contains no realistic limitation, whether geographical or political. In effect, it replaces meaningful strategy with a pretty empty slogan.
Gracias – it’s a bit like Cold War – what you make of it. Certainly it’s not strategy, and unless you articulate an accompanying strategy, you risk strategic vacuum.
I like the ‘Long’ bit – the purpose of my post. As for the ‘War’ bit, it’s certainly that, but of course, as a strategist you then need to decide how much of a war it is.
indeed. though the Cold War generated a sophisticated body of intellectual ideas and doctrines through which the conflict could be delimited and sustained.
its not so much the labelling that jars, but the perverse process through which we create and debate slogans before the hard work of defining the conflict itself.
I don’t like ‘Long’ as much as you do, partly because it leaves the war unbounded, but mainly because it accepts and reinforces the status quo, the premise that the war has expeditionary nationbuilding at its core and that this is the only and necessary way to wage it.
I’m not sure about the British, but I can say that the Americans in general aren’t willing to put up with a long war. It’s a matter of time before isolationists begin to force a drop in soldiers abroad, and gradually to eliminate involvement in foreign nations (especially ones that we don’t care about because they aren’t big or rich).
I agree-another reason I have doubts that the US can prevail in any COIN operation if the insurgents have done their homework. Modern (or perhaps more accurately, post-modern) Americans have neither the attention span nor the requisite “fire in the belly” for any far off conflict that requires even a modicum of abstract analysis of something so old-fashioned as “national security.”
Kenneth:
Maybe it is just me with my warped perspective of having been both a combat leader and now (somewhat–in comparison to the true brainiac denizens of KOW) academic, but I find it just a little discomfiting to read:
“Obama to a poker player who chooses to call, rather than raise the stakes or fold. Obama is playing for time, seeing which way things shape up. Stewart likes that, and so do I.”
While perhaps it is just the gaming metaphor that is off-putting, it bears keeping in mind that while “playing for time” may be appropriate for poker–even the high stakes, celebrity kind now all the rage on TV, is it “right” given the inestimably high “stakes” of the lives of our troops who are in actual operations? IMHO, it borders on the immoral to have troops (and most recently intelligence officers) being killed and maimed, not to mention the many innocents caught up in the fighting, while our politicians “play for time.” I have seen similar gamesmanship before in our Vietnam adventure (I make the reference advisedly given the previous debate on KOW but it is a frame of reference for me experientially as well as academically) and do not relish having to live through a reprise.
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C Jr – forgive my glib phrasing. Of course it’s a sensitive issue for troops and (most particularly) their families.
Not making a binary decision at any one point, however, seems to me both a valid, and sometimes sensible part of strategic deliberation. And showing patience and realism about timetables and commitment seems prudent in conflicts likely to linger on for some time yet.
On the issue of troops, however, would you agree that there is an important difference with Vietnam, in that our respective armed forces today are all volunteers? Moreover, many of them will have signed up since these wars got started back in 2001. Leaders shouldn’t use troops lightly, certainly, but professional soldiers should, and do, expect to be deployed to fight in the national interest.
Realizing my personal stake in some of this I am trying not to take things too literally or ascribe thoughts that are not there so let me try to reply to your thoughtful post that I nevertheless find a bit opague.
Of course “our” (the collective US/UK) military forces are volunteers and are rightly expected (short of facially unlawful orders of course) to do the bidding of their rightful superiors, uniformed or civilian. This expectation, however, is no different than that obtaining during the Vietnam era when we had the draft.
No doubt you were alluding more to the social and political differences between a draft and volunteer force structure (although I would argue that some of the same socio-political sensitivities and dynamics at play in the draft era are also at work now with the increased involvement of National Guard and Reserve forces in close combat with the expected casualty rates). Nevertheless, the fact remains that lives and bodies of our military, intelligence and other agencies are literally in the balance as our political leaders engage in what we can all hope is in fact “sensible strategic deliberation.”
That these lives and bodies are of volunteers rather than conscripts is again IMHO quite irrelevant to this reality. Furthermore, from the circumstances surrounding the delay in the current US administration responding to Gen. McChrystal’s report and request (not being privy to the actual discussions in the White House and being cynical enough not to ever take press releases at face value, I am left to make reasoned assumptions based on the surrounding circumstances and readily concede I may be wrong), I do not think the “playing for time” of at least the US administration is actually that kind of “sensible strategic deliberation” to which you refer. Instead, I think it is rather (and this is the reason I compare it to the Vietnam experience) much of the same shameless partisan political maneuvering that came to light in the various mea culpa books by our political leaders who gave us our Vietnam defeat.
I realize a degree of this kind of realpolitik is inevitable in any significant problem facing an elected government but I still find it reprehensible that our political leaders appear to have less regard (there are myriad indicators of this–just look at the many politically important but objectively frivolous activities of our government during the inexplicably long period it was supposedly sensibly deliberating grand strategy to respond to Gen. McChrystal) for the lives and bodies of those they have sent into harm’s way (volunteers or otherwise) than they do for their own political fortunes.
PS: I was too quick on the submit button–please add a final word “programs.” to my last sermon.
Grr…and move it to the right post under the next heading regarding Strategies, analogies and Luttwak ! ;-)