WINNING THE WARS WE'RE IN
by John A. Nagl
John Nagl is President of the Center for a New American
Security in Washington, D.C. He has taught national security
studies at West Point, as well as Georgetown University. He
is the author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife:
Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, and was
on the writing team that produced the U.S. Army/Marine Corps
Counterinsurgency Field Manual. He is also a member of the
Defense Policy Board.
The FPRI-Temple University Consortium is part of the Hertog
Program on Grand Strategy, made possible by a grant from the
Hertog Foundation.
This essay draws upon John A. Nagl, "Let's Win the Wars
We're In," Joint Force Quarterly 52 (1st Quarter 2009),
available at
http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Press/jfq_pages/editions/i52/7.pdf WINNING THE WARS WE'RE IN
by John A. Nagl
Your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to
win our wars.
-General Douglas MacArthur[1]
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have spurred long-overdue
changes in the way the U.S. military prepares for and
prioritizes irregular warfare. These changes are hard won:
they have been achieved only after years of wartime trials
and tribulations that have cost the United States dearly in
lives of its courageous Service men and women, money and
materiel. However, these changes are not universally
applauded. Yet I believe they should continue, particularly
regarding the ongoing war in Afghanistan.
Today, the United States is not winning a counterinsurgency
campaign in Afghanistan. And in Iraq, it just managed to
turn around another that was on the verge of catastrophic
collapse only two years ago. A continued U.S. commitment to
both campaigns is likely necessary for some years to come.
America's enemies in the Long War-the al Qaeda terrorist
organization and its associated movements infesting other
states around the world-remain determined to strike. A host
of trends from globalization, to population growth, to
weapons proliferation suggests that the "era of persistent
conflict" against lethal nonstate irregular foes will not
end any time soon.[2] For these reasons, the security of the
United States and its interests demand that the nation
continue to learn and adapt to counterinsurgency and
irregular warfare and that it institutionalize these
adaptations so that they are not forgotten again.
Forgetting Yesterday's Lessons-On Purpose
Our military capability to succeed in today's wars can only
be explained in light of our experience in Vietnam. In the
wake of that war, the Army chose to focus on large-scale
conventional combat and "forget" counterinsurgency. Studies
criticizing the Army's approach to the Vietnam War were
largely ignored. The solution was to rebuild an Army
focused exclusively on achieving decisive operational
victories on the battlefield.
The dark side of this rebirth was rejecting irregular
warfare as a significant component of future conflict.
Rather than rethinking and improving its counterinsurgency
doctrine after Vietnam, the Army sought to bury it, largely
banishing it from its key field manuals and the curriculum
of its schoolhouses. Doctrine for "low-intensity" operations
did make a comeback in the 1980s, but the Army regarded such
missions as the exclusive province of special operations
forces. Worse, these revamped doctrinal publications
prescribed the same enemy-centric conventional operations
and tactics that had been developed in the early 1960s,
again giving short shrift to the importance of securing the
population and countering political subversion.[3] It was as
if the Vietnam War had never happened.
The military's superlative performance in Operation Desert
Storm in 1991 further entrenched the mindset that
conventional state-on-state warfare was the future, while
counterinsurgency and irregular warfare were but lesser
included contingencies. The United States did not adjust to
the fact that its peer competitor had collapsed, spending
the decade after the Cold War's end continuing to prepare
for war against a Soviet Union that no longer existed.
Deployments to Somalia, Haiti, and the Balkans in the 1990s
brought us face to face with diverse missions that did not
adhere to the Desert Storm model. Despite the relatively
high demand for its forces in unconventional environments,
the U.S. military continued to emphasize "rapid, decisive
battlefield operations by large combat forces" in its
doctrine and professional education. The overriding emphasis
on conventional operations left the military unable to deal
effectively with the wars it ultimately had to fight.
A Failure of Adaptation
After the wake-up call of September 11, 2001, our lack of
preparedness was exacerbated by our failure to adapt fully
and rapidly to the demands of counterinsurgency in Iraq and
Afghanistan. By early 2002, the Taliban appeared defeated
and Afghanistan firmly under the control of America's Afghan
allies. The fall of Baghdad in April 2003 after a three-week
campaign initially appeared as further confirmation of the
superiority of U.S. military capabilities. In both
instances, the enemy had other plans. Inadequate contingency
planning by both civilian leaders and military commanders to
secure the peace contributed to the chaotic conditions that
enabled insurgent groups to establish themselves. With some
notable lower-level exceptions, the military did not adapt
to these conditions until it was perilously close to losing
these wars.
U.S. forces faced with insurgencies had no doctrinal or
training background in irregular warfare and reacted in an
uncoordinated and often counterproductive fashion to the
challenges they faced. Many of these early ad-hoc approaches
to counterinsurgency failed to protect the population from
insurgent attacks and alienated the people through the
excessive use of force.[4] Although some units did develop
and employ effective population-centric counterinsurgency
techniques independently, such improvements were not
emulated in a coordinated fashion throughout the force.[5]
It was not until 2007 that we finally adopted a unified
approach that effectively secured the population and co-
opted reconcilable insurgent fighters in Iraq-and we are
currently attempting to make that leap in Afghanistan, a
campaign that we neglected to focus on the war in Iraq. The
price for those decisions is now coming due.
Toward a "Better War" in Afghanistan
Preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a sanctuary for
terrorists with global reach or serving as the catalyst for
a broader regional security meltdown are the key objectives
of the campaign there. Securing these objectives requires
helping the Afghans to build a sustainable system of
governance that can adequately ensure security for the
Afghan people- the keystone upon which a successful exit
strategy depends. We should instead aim for a sustainable
system of governance that can effectively combat the
insurgency, and in doing so prevent a re-emergence of
transnational terrorist safe havens. Achieving these goals
will require more military forces, but also a much greater
commitment to good governance and to providing for the needs
of the Afghan people where they live. The coalition will
need to use its considerable leverage to counter Afghan
government corruption at every level.
While an expanded international commitment of security and
development forces can assist in achieving these goals in
the short term, ultimately Afghans must ensure stability and
security in their own country. Building a state that is able
to provide a modicum of security and governance to its
people is the American exit strategy from Afghanistan. The
successful implementation of a better-resourced effort to
build Iraqi security forces, after years of floundering, is
now enabling the drawdown of U.S. forces from that country
as Iraqi forces increasingly take responsibility for their
own security; a similar situation will define success in
Afghanistan. The classic "clear, hold, and build"
counterinsurgency model was relearned over several painful
years in Iraq, but at present there are insufficient Afghan
soldiers and police to implement that approach by holding
areas that have been cleared of insurgents. As a result,
U.S. troops have had to clear the same areas
repeatedly-paying a price for each operation in both
American lives and in Afghan public support, which suffers
from Taliban reprisals whenever we "clear and leave."
U.S. and allied forces must ensure that their uses of force
are not counterproductive to the operational necessity of
population security and gaining local support against the
insurgency. As in the early years of the Iraq war, U.S.
troops previously tended toward both heavy-handed tactics
and reliance on air strikes that have served to alienate the
Afghan population. While the new U.S. command in
Afghanistan has taken steps to rein in counterproductive
uses of force, these incidents have left a legacy of Afghan
mistrust that will be difficult to overcome.
Secondly, while considerable focus is now on the direct
counterinsurgency role of U.S. forces, more attention and
resources must be devoted to developing Afghan security
forces. More U.S. soldiers are required now to implement a
"Clear, Hold, and Build" counterinsurgency strategy, but
over time responsibility must transition to the Afghans to
secure their own country. If the first requirement for
success in a counterinsurgency campaign is the ability to
secure the population, the counterinsurgent requires boots
on the ground and plenty of them. The long-term answer is an
expanded Afghan National Army and effective police forces.
Currently the Afghan Army, is at 70,000 and projected to
grow to 135,000, and is perhaps the most effective
institution in the country. It must be substantially
expanded, and mirrored by sizable local police forces, to
provide the security that will prevent Taliban insurgent
infiltration of the population. Building Afghan security
forces will be a long-term effort that will require U.S. and
international assistance and advisers for many years, but
there is no viable alternative. There is also,
unfortunately, no viable alternative to the international
community underwriting most of the Afghan security forces,
although it is worth remembering that more than fifty Afghan
soldiers can be fielded for the cost of one deployed
American soldier.
The United States and International Security Assistance Fund
(ISAF) also need to get smarter about the way they engage
Afghan communities at the local level. Insurgencies can be
won or lost at the local level because securing the support
of the population requires understanding the specific issues
that cause it to sympathize with one side or another.
Insurgencies are rarely monolithic: they comprise numerous
local factions and individuals fighting for personal gain,
revenge against real or perceived slights, tribal loyalties,
or other reasons that may have little to do with the
insurgency's professed cause. The Taliban is an amalgam of
local fighters and mercenary and criminal elements around a
hard core of committed jihadists. U.S. commanders are
interested in trying to "flip" less ideological factions and
promoting the development of local self-defense militias to
encourage the Afghan tribes to defend against Taliban
infiltration.[6] Exploiting divisions within an insurgency
paid dividends in Iraq, where the emergence of Anbar
Awakening and Sons of Iraq played a major role in crippling
al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and dramatically reducing violence.
However, local communities are unlikely to turn in favor of
ISAF and the Afghan government until these institutions
demonstrate that they are fully willing and able to drive
out the Taliban and provide some level of lasting security
and competent governance. Local communities won't resist the
Taliban or help the security forces as long as the
insurgency appears to hold the upper hand while the
government remains weak at best and abusive at worst.
Seizing the initiative from the Taliban and reestablishing
the political order's legitimacy requires securing the
population and developing a sophisticated, nuanced
understanding of local communities, particularly the
conflicts within them that insurgents can exploit to their
own ends.
Building host nation security forces and "flipping" elements
of the Taliban are not sufficient to succeed on their own,
but they are important components of a counterinsurgency
strategy that can succeed in Afghanistan if properly
resourced.
Learning from our Mistakes
Saint Augustine taught that "the purpose of war is to build
a better peace," but we have not built the capacity to
create that better peace in the American national security
establishment. A close look at the historical record reveals
that the United States engages in ambiguous
counterinsurgency and nation-building missions far more
often than it faces full-scale war. Similar demands will
only increase in a globalized world where local problems
increasingly do not stay local and where "the most likely
catastrophic threats to our homeland-for example, an
American city poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist
attack-are more likely to emanate from failing states than
from aggressor states."[7]
Trends such as the youth bulge and urbanization in
underdeveloped states, as well as the proliferation of more
lethal weaponry, point to a future dominated by chaotic
local insecurity and conflict rather than confrontations
between the armies and navies of nation-states.[8] This
future of persistent low-intensity conflict around the globe
suggests that American interests are at risk not from rising
peer competitors but from what has been called a "global
security capacity deficit."[9] As such, the U.S. military is
more likely to be called upon to counter insurgencies,
intervene in civil strife and humanitarian crises, rebuild
nations, and wage unconventional types of warfare than it is
to fight mirror-image armed forces. We will not have the
luxury of opting out of these missions because they do not
conform to preferred notions of the American way of
war.[10]
Both state and nonstate enemies will seek more asymmetric
ways to challenge the United States and its allies.
America's conventional military superiority, which remains
substantial, will drive many of them to the same conclusion:
When they fight America conventionally, they lose decisively
in days or weeks. When they fight unconventionally by
employing guerrilla tactics, terrorism, and information
operations, they have a better chance of success. It is
unclear why even a powerful enemy would want to risk a
costly head-to-head battlefield decision with the United
States. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said, "Put
simply, our enemies and potential adversaries-including
nation states-have gone to school on us. They saw what
America's technology and firepower did to Saddam's army in
1991 and again in 2003, and they've seen what [improvised
explosive devices] are doing to the American military
today."[11]
The developing strategic environment will find state and
nonstate adversaries devising innovative strategies to
counter U.S. military power by exploiting widely available
technology and weapons and integrating tactics from across
the spectrum of conflict. The resulting conflicts will be
protracted and hinge on the affected populations'
perceptions of truth and legitimacy rather than the outcome
of tactical engagements on the battlefield. This is the kind
of war we are struggling to understand in Afghanistan; it is
the kind of war we are most likely to face in the future.
----------------------------------------------------------
Notes
[1] Douglas A. MacArthur, farewell speech before the West
Point Corps of Cadets, West Point, NY, May 12, 1962,
available at:
www.nationalcenter.org/MacArthurFarewell.html [2] Geren and Casey, "Strategic Context," available at:
www.army.mil/aps/08/strategic_context/strategic_context.html [3] Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., The Army and Vietnam
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp.
271-273.
[4] See Nigel Alwyn-Foster, "Changing the Army for
Counterinsurgency Operations," Military Review,
November/December 2005, pp. 2-15; Daniel Marston, "Lessons
in 21st-Century Counterinsurgency: Afghanistan 2001-2007,"
in Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare, ed. Daniel Marston
and Carter Malkasian (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2008),
pp. 226-232; Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military
Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin, 2006), pp. 214-297.
[5] George Packer, "The Lesson of Tal Afar," The New Yorker,
April 10, 2006, available at:
www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/10/060410fa_fact2[6] See Fontini Christia and Michael Semple, "Flipping the
Taliban," Foreign Affairs, July/August 2009.
[7] Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, September 29, 2008.
[8] For more on this point, see John A. Nagl and Paul L.
Yingling, "New Rules for New Enemies," Armed Forces Journal,
October 2006, available at:
www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/10/2088425[9] Jim Thomas, Sustainable Security: Developing a Security
Strategy for the Long Haul (Washington, DC: Center for a New
American Security, April 2008), 9, available at:
www.cnas.org/attachments/contentmanagers/1924/Thomas_SustainableSecurity_April08.pdf [10] Gates, September 29, 2008.
[11] Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, October 10, 2007.
----------------------------------------------------------
Established in 2009, the Hertog Program in Grand Strategy is
a unique endeavor between Temple University's Center for the
Study of Force and Diplomacy and the Foreign Policy Research
Institute. This program is composed of three components:
research, publication, and education. The Consortium on
Grand Strategy will provide a distinctive intellectual
community for the presentation and vetting of innovative
research in the study of grand strategy. The Hertog Program
in Grand Strategy's e-mail newsletter, The Telegram, will
disseminate the condensed-length versions of this research
to a wider scholarly and policy-interested audience and the
Foreign Policy Research Institute's journal, Orbis, will
frequently carry the full-length pieces. In addition to
these events, Temple University will roll out in the spring
2010 semester a seminar for advanced undergraduate and
graduate students entitled "Grand Strategy: History and
Policy" to help educate the next generation of leaders who
can apply historical training to contemporary international
challenges. Students from the seminar will participate in
the first portion of Consortium programs starting in the
spring. Professors Richard Immerman and William Hitchcock
are co-directors of the Hertog Program in Grand Strategy;
FPRI Senior FellowMichael Noonan is coordinator of the
Consortium on Grand Strategy. For further information on
the Hertog Program, visit
http://www.temple.edu/cenfad/GrandStrategy.htm or contact
whitch@temple.edu or
rimmerma@temple.edu.
Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." --
