Summary: On the 16th anniversary of the Afghanistan War, let’s ask why our investment of much blood and money in the WOT has accomplished so little. Despite our weak foes. To see why, look at advice given our troops in 2006. It was bad advice. Obviously so at the time. But our hubris made it seem logical.
As of October 7, we have been in Afghanistan for 16 years. At its peak, NATO had almost 140,000 troops in Afghanistan (132,457 on 6 June 2011). The cost to America in money is somewhere between $900 billion and $2 trillion (depending on your assumptions). The cost in blood is 2,350 dead and 20 thousand wounded American soldiers (per DoD), and a total of 3,451 dead for NATO (per iCasualties). The results from our occupation of Iraq were equally low, despite the high cost in blood and money.
The results for America, Iraq, and Afghanistan are meager for those investments of time and blood. This is especially odd since we are fighting poorly equipped and almost untrained insurgents. Even odder, we seldom ask why. In the early years of the war, people in the 4GW community explained why this would happen (Martin van Creveld explained this in 1991
Below you will see my favorite of this long series. It’s from May 2007, revised for improved clarity (I’m a better writer now). It shows the amazing hubris of our military in the WOT. Which was and is quite mad, given foreign armies’ almost total record of failure fighting foreign insurgencies since Mao brought 4GW to maturity after WWII (details here). I’ve seen nothing that so clearly shows the thinking that has produced so little for America at such great cost.
“Twenty-Eight Articles:
Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency“.
David Kilcullen, Military Review, May-June 2006.
Kilcullen originally submitted it to Military Review for the “Countering Insurgency” writing contest. They decided to publish it immediately because it could help Soldiers in the field.” LTC Kilcullen allowed them to do so, withdrawing from the writing contest. They said “It would certainly have been a strong contender for a prize.” It went viral, influencing countless officers deploying to fight our wars. It is not just bad advice. It is bizarrely bad advice. Red emphasis added.
Article #1: “Know your turf.”
“Know the people, the topography, economy, history, religion and culture. Know every village, road, field, population group, tribal leader and ancient grievance. Your task is to become the world expert on your district.“
It is easy to read this as important but banal. Centurions posted to remote Roman provinces were probably told to “know your turf.” This ignores the depth of Kilcullen’s insight. He is describing the “home court advantage,” one reason for the superiority of defense over offense. It is a powerful advantage in war, especially so in 4GW. It is one reason for the consistent victory of locals over foreigner armies since WWII.
Unfortunately, in the Middle East our foes have this advantage, not us. The world expert in each neighborhood in our war zones lives there. US company commanders on twelve month rotations cannot develop the locals’ knowledge about their home turf, especially in so foreign a culture. How much can a commander learn about these very foreign lands in that brief time? Starting with little knowledge of the area’s language, history, and culture — let alone the area’s complex geography and social relationships.
It would be difficult for some of them to do so quickly in Watts or Harlem.
Now for the bad news. Our company commanders know little about “them”. Many of them know a lot about us. Thousands of people from the Middle East have studied or worked in America.
“As we shall show, defense is a stronger form of fighting than attack. …I am convinced that the superiority of the defensive (if rightly understood) is very great, far greater than appears at first sight.”
— From Book 1, Chapter 1 of Clausewitz’s On War
.
Article #2 – “Diagnose the problem.”
“Once you know your area and its people, you can begin to diagnose the problem. Who are the insurgents? What drives them? What makes local leaders tick?”
Having “strategic corporals” was insufficiently awesome. Now we need sociologist captains who can analyze and prescribe solutions for foreign societies. Could we send the average company commander to do so in Watts or Harlem? Worst of all, this advice crashes on our lack of the home court advantage. How can someone newly arrived in a foreign culture – Iraq and especially Afghanistan are very foreign to most Americans – do this without speaking the local languages, knowing little of the culture, history, or local relationships.
This is not a task for company commanders, who already carry a complex and heavy load of managerial and leadership duties.
Conclusions
Please read the rest of “28 Articles.” Most of it is great advice, just like the first two discussed here — but for insurgents. Not for foreign infidel invaders. A similar confusion is often seen when hawks take advice from T. E. Lawrence’s (“Lawrence of Arabia”) great book Seven Pillars of Wisdom
The War on Terror has been largely on the basis of such conceptual and factual errors. As such its failure was baked in from the start. Now Trump plans to expand it while learning nothing from our failures. No nation, no matter how powerful, can long prosper under such mismanagement.
“Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”
— Attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson.
About the author
David Kilcullen has become famous for his role designing our tactics in the War on Terror. Their failure has not affected his career. See his impressive bio. Imagine what it would look like if we had some successes!
“He served 25 years as an army officer, diplomat and policy advisor for the Australian and United States governments, in command and operational missions (including peacekeeping, counterinsurgency and foreign internal defense) across the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Europe. {In 2005 he retired as a lieutenant colonel from active duty.}
“In the United States he served as Chief Strategist in the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, and served in Iraq as Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Petraeus, before becoming Special Advisor for Counterinsurgency to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“Dr. Kilcullen holds a Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales, with a focus on the political anthropology of guerrilla warfare. He …was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1996. Dr. Kilcullen was named one of the Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2009.
“Today Kilcullen is an ASU Future of War senior fellow at New America {think tank}. Kilcullen is Founder and Chairman of Caerus Global Solutions, a strategic research and design firm that helps governments, global institutions, businesses and communities build resiliency in conflict, disaster-affected and post-conflict environments. He is also the Founder and Chairman of First Mile Geo, a tech startup that pioneers open, online cloud-based platforms for collecting, analyzing, sharing, and visualizing social and spatial data.”
See his 2009 book The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One
For More Information.
See the other posts about David Kilcullen’s work, which provides deep insights about our mad WOT.
If you found this post of use, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Also see all posts about Afghanistan and Iraq, about COIN, and especially these…
- Return of the COINistas (the zombies of military theory).
- Why we lose wars so often. How we can win in the future.
- A powerful new article shows why we lose so many wars: FAILure to learn.
- Study body counts to learn about our wars: how we fight, why we lose.
- Two generals chat about Afghanistan (a funny, sad, horrifying look at our war).
- Why Trump’s plan for Afghanistan will fail.
- Stratfor pans Trump’s new Afghanistan War plan.
- A reminder that we pay for our wars in money and blood.
- How We Learned Not To Care About Our Wars.