One of the hands-down best policy podcasts out there is “The Political Scene,” produced weekly — and superbly — by The New Yorker (iTunes link). I’ve been listening to it for about two years now, usually while running in Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC. Now that I’m not in DC any more, it’s one of the things that, oddly, makes me feel most connected. Voices just feel more immediate than the printed word.
This week, Jeffrey Toobin hosts Raffi Khatchadourian and Steve Coll on the WikiLeaks reports. Coll said something noteworthy in his closing words on the war in Afghanistan. It may be repeated and quoted here. Keep in mind the context: the summer has been hard. This July is now the deadliest month of the entire 9-year war so far, for the United States at least. 63 soldiers were killed, surpassing last month’s record of 60.
Now try taking a step back. “A new phase of the war has already begun,” Coll tells us. He’s not sure American decision makers always recognize and acknowledge that we’re in a transition phase — I certainly know the feeling from Europe. “The exit strategy is already under way,” he says. The date is not certain yet, but certain is that it will be some time between 2011 and 2014. That is not far off, mind you. “Every actor in the war knows it’s coming.” And “everybody” is “hedging for a post-NATO combat role in Afghanistan.”
Now, here Mr Coll might be a bit too optimistic. There can be little doubt that some actors are preparing for a post-NATO — read: post-counterinsurgency — Afghanistan: yes, the Taliban are patiently preparing; many among the local population are preparing; probably the current regime in Afghanistan is preparing; certainly Pakistani intelligence is hedging its bets in the shadows. But what about Washington? What about London and Berlin? In the past month I took part in two pretty high-level off-the-record workshops on irregular war and Afghanistan, one in the United States and one in Germany. In Berlin I asked a colonel, a diplomat, and a development expert about the government’s plans in case the current strategy does not work in the next year or two. First was silence. Then they said it will work. Hoping seems to be the West’s choice, not hedging.
Most informed observers – some seem stuck in 2006 — would probably agree with Coll, the big issue is not: “can [Washington, or NATO for that matter] achieve a military victory, but can it manage this transition so that Afghanistan does not collapse back into civil war or produce a second Taliban revolution.” What a heavy dose of realism. I’m not used to it any more. Feels like a dirty vodka martini after years of abstinence (another reason for missing DC there).
Then, yes, let’s have more of it. And just to be a little more creative, how’s doing that exercise without using the word counterinsurgency?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
You’re raising an important point, Thomas, and for Berlin, you’re about 80% right. While there are — as usual — no proper strategic plans being made for the two or three main scenarios we might face, however, smart people in the German government are very well aware that the transition has already begun and that there are many ways it could go. When I was asking people at the Foreign Office this week about their research priorities (“what should people like myself start doing now so we are going to be useful to you in 6 months time?”), the number one issue was some variation on transition strategies. Also, “high-level off-the-record workshops” in Germany and the U.S. are very different animals, as you know. The Germans, in particular, may not be sharing as much in a forum of more than two or three people, even off the record, as what they might be willing to share one-on-one in a hallway.
Granted, Philipp. I’m sure there are very clever people thinking about transition already in NATO capitals, including Berlin, of course. Maybe it would be beneficial if they would be more forthright about it? For the quality of their ideas (hence for themselves); for the allies, including America; and for the public at home which is paying for all that after all.
To be sure, all the implication of this massive screw-up…the hubris of brawn over brain…will never be cause for introspection because introspection is too demoralizing to the men who’d rather cover-up. The military-civilian polarization will occur and the imbecility of post-Vietnam analysis will seem brilliant next to post-Afghan analysis. Yet the fact that everyone was selling deadly snake oil will never be the issue because the snake oil salesmen still control the message, Weakileaks notwithstanding.
Every war has its vets. Those who learned from the last one by being devoted to it are too old, too weak, and too disconnected by the walling of them out of the future, delving into the past instead as if it were a one-time unique event. So the War on Terror staff officers will now hit their laptops to write their version of Wikileaks. GW Bush, it seems, will come out with his before the end of the year and his fellow Republicans fear that his motto is: “every man for himself [explaining away the obvious].
The lesson is that there is no lesson because those who had been hiding their mediocrity from history with football pep-talk crap are the ones who get first shot at writing history of their catastrophe. But as things calm down and the really serious geriatrics get together with the really analytic youngsters we COULD get a lot wiser version….but we won’t because Americans Gov-types are hustlers all and hustlers hate nothing more than history and reason. I recall my encounter with a Pentagon brass on loan to the White House. We were doing well in dialogue until he got all declarative and threatened: “If you want meaningful dialogue with me you better not ever bring up that loooosssseeeerrr’s war, Vietnam.” I guess now he’s a retired corporate board member pretending to be relevant rather than just connected.
Milblogs are made for the dying to think they’re doing it right regardless, written by those who totally screwed up and trying to substitute can-do rha rha for analysis. It helps to be up on the current acronyms and projectile dimension, in millimeters, so you can seem authoritative when all you are is a survivor. And above all, the more tactical minutia, the more you can fog up the strategic picture of catastrophe! The Kegans-types will go into silence, by now clearly marked as bungling agitprops and the Biddles will go on confident that their dribble was obscure enough gibberish not to seem like total mis-predictions.
There will be a period of silence followed by a period of recrimination and then will come all the PhD theses, some very perceptive, some superficial like that of Petraeus. But together they will document the obvious….of course, two decades too late to even avoid another lesson un-learned.
And then there are us old guys who realize that waaaaaay back in the beginning, when we could have stopped this idiocy, we were gung-ho-pro because we had to believe in something, only to later be contemplating suicide because we were soooo stupidly wrong, so helpless in fixing the tune we were singing and soooo guilty for the dead mom and dad soldiers, making for soooo MANY ORPHANS AND WIDOWS ON THE HOMEFRONT.
For a year now the civilians have been competing with the vets over entitlements. Everyone is “me first.” Meanwhile the Jihadis are also “me first” but for the glory of killing infidels and Taklfiris for Allah.
Obama is a political mechanic, sacrificing life and wealth to political advantage. So, once again we lose from ignorance and hubris.