Those might be four useful tenets if you have the other basics covered like Logistics. Number one tenet should be, and was taught to Soviet officers who managed many more successful counter insurgencies, to seal the borders. If you can’t do that, you probably will not be able to pull it off. Giving your adversary a place to pull back to and regroup, recover, etc. is a stunningly bad idea. It’s also a really bad idea to have your counter insurgent force supplied over land through your adversary’s turf like Pakistan. It puts you at their mercy and gives them all kinds of leverage to make outrageous demands on your diplomats and soldiers. Number two. Don’t confuse your enemies with your friends. Tolerating Pakistani support for the Taliban is military and political malpractice. Making pretend that they are some kind of difficult ally and not an adversary should be grounds dismissal from service and not a career path to K Street. Number three. Be realistic about costs. Accepting an “asymmetric” formula and and facing your adversary by throwing ever greater numbers at it is dumb. Dumb leviathans lose wars. Just ask the Russians. Insurgents count on the economic and social costs to bleed you down. Don’t give them that. Afghanistan has become a feeding frenzy for contractors and there is little real or effective control over that. When you have mercenary organizations carrying out your national policy, guarding your embassies, etc., the will and intent of your national policy is almost certainly going to be watered down. Number four. Avoid getting into, or allowing your wars to be defined or morphed into counter insurgencies. America was a victor when we rolled into Kabul. From that point on, we have been fighting Pakistan which seeks to dominate Afghanistan as it always has. That is a classic two-sided confrontation and far more manageable and understandable for Americans to understand and accept. Making pretend they are your allies and tying one hand behind your back in a fight is again, military and diplomatic malpractice. Number five. Don’t use mercenaries. It is expensive and signals to your own soldiers that you have no faith in them to carry out a mission. It also probably means that the whole thing is a seriously dumb idea that cannot be achieved from the start. You’re better off using locals who are probably much more motivated because the result of the fighting impacts them far more seriously. Lastly. Don’t take much advice from generals who lose wars. If that isn’t self-evident, you’re in the wrong line of work. Get a job as a waiter. You get to wear a uniform to serve in, and you’ll get more respect.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 21:04:05 +0000
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