Tuesday, October 13, 2015

The Illusion That The Pentagon Knows How To Build Foreign Armies


On Building Armies (and Watching Them Fail) 
Why Washington Can’t “Stand Up” Foreign Militaries 
By Andrew J. Bacevich
First came Fallujah, then Mosul, and later Ramadi in Iraq.  Now, there is Kunduz, a provincial capital in northern Afghanistan.  In all four places, the same story has played out: in cities that newspaper reporters like to call “strategically important,” security forces trained and equipped by the U.S. military at great expense simply folded, abandoning their posts (and much of their U.S.-supplied weaponry) without even mounting serious resistance.  Called upon to fight, they fled.  In each case, the defending forces gave way before substantially outnumbered attackers, making the outcomes all the more ignominious.
Together, these setbacks have rendered a verdict on the now more-or-less nameless Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Successive blitzkriegs by ISIS and the Taliban respectively did more than simply breach Iraqi and Afghan defenses. They also punched gaping holes in the strategy to which the United States had reverted in hopes of stemming the further erosion of its position in the Greater Middle East.

Recall that, when the United States launched its GWOT soon after 9/11, it did so pursuant to a grandiose agenda. U.S. forces were going to imprint onto others a specific and exalted set of values. During President George W. Bush’s first term, this “freedom agenda” formed the foundation, or at least the rationale, for U.S. policy.
The shooting would stop, Bush vowed, only when countries like Afghanistan had ceased to harbor anti-American terrorists and countries like Iraq had ceased to encourage them. Achieving this goal meant that the inhabitants of those countries would have to change. Afghans and Iraqis, followed in due course by Syrians, Libyans, Iranians, and sundry others would embrace democracy, respect human rights, and abide by the rule of law, or else. Through the concerted application of American power, they would become different -- more like us and therefore more inclined to get along with us. A bit less Mecca and Medina, a bit more “we hold these truths” and “of the people, by the people.”
So Bush and others in his inner circle professed to believe.  At least some of them, probably including Bush himself, may actually have done so.
History, at least the bits and pieces to which Americans attend, seemed to endow such expectations with a modicum of plausibility. Had not such a transfer of values occurred after World War II when the defeated Axis Powers had hastily thrown in with the winning side? Had it not recurred as the Cold War was winding down, when previously committed communists succumbed to the allure of consumer goods and quarterly profit statements?
If the appropriate mix of coaching and coercion were administered, Afghans and Iraqis, too, would surely take the path once followed by good Germans and nimble Japanese, and subsequently by Czechs tired of repression and Chinese tired of want. Once liberated, grateful Afghans and Iraqis would align themselves with a conception of modernity that the United States had pioneered and now exemplified. For this transformation to occur, however, the accumulated debris of retrograde social conventions and political arrangements that had long retarded progress would have to be cleared away. This was what the invasions of Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom!) and Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom!) were meant to accomplish in one fell swoop by a military the likes of which had (to hear Washington tell it) never been seen in history. POW!
Standing Them Up As We Stand Down
Concealed within that oft-cited “freedom” -- the all-purpose justification for deploying American power -- were several shades of meaning. The term, in fact, requires decoding. Yet within the upper reaches of the American national security apparatus, one definition takes precedence over all others. In Washington, freedom has become a euphemism for dominion. Spreading freedom means positioning the United States to call the shots. Seen in this context, Washington’s expected victories in both Afghanistan and Iraq were meant to affirm and broaden its preeminence by incorporating large parts of the Islamic world into the American imperium. They would benefit, of course, but to an even greater extent, so would we.
Alas, liberating Afghans and Iraqis turned out to be a tad more complicated than the architects of Bush’s freedom (or dominion) agenda anticipated.  Well before Barack Obama succeeded Bush in January 2009, few observers -- apart from a handful of ideologues and militarists -- clung to the fairy tale of U.S. military might whipping the Greater Middle East into shape.  Brutally but efficiently, war had educated the educable.  As for the uneducable, they persisted in taking their cues from Fox News and the Weekly Standard.
Yet if the strategy of transformation via invasion and “nation building” had failed, there was a fallback position that seemed to be dictated by the logic of events. Together, Bush and Obama would lower expectations as to what the United States was going to achieve, even as they imposed new demands on the U.S. military, America’s go-to outfit in foreign policy, to get on with the job.
Rather than midwifing fundamental political and cultural change, the Pentagon was instead ordered to ramp up its already gargantuan efforts to create local militaries (and police forces) capable of maintaining order and national unity. President Bush provided a concise formulation of the new strategy: “As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” Under Obama, after his own stab at a “surge,” the dictum applied to Afghanistan as well. Nation-building had flopped. Building armies and police forces able to keep a lid on things now became the prevailing definition of success.
The United States had, of course, attempted this approach once before, with unhappy results.  This was in Vietnam.  There, efforts to destroy North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces intent on unifying their divided country had exhausted both the U.S. military and the patience of the American people. Responding to the logic of events, Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had a tacitly agreed upon fallback position. As the prospects of American forces successfully eliminating threats to South Vietnamese security faded, the training and equipping of the South Vietnamese to defend themselves became priority number one.
Dubbed “Vietnamization,” this enterprise ended in abject failure with the fall of Saigon in 1975. Yet that failure raised important questions to which members of the national security elite might have attended: Given a weak state with dubious legitimacy, how feasible is it to expect outsiders to invest indigenous forces with genuine fighting power?  How do differences in culture or history or religion affect the prospects for doing so? Can skill ever make up for a deficit of will? Can hardware replace cohesion? Above all, if tasked with giving some version of Vietnamization another go, what did U.S. forces need to do differently to ensure a different result?
At the time, with general officers and civilian officials more inclined to forget Vietnam than contemplate its implications, these questions attracted little attention. Instead, military professionals devoted themselves to gearing up for the next fight, which they resolved would be different. No more Vietnams -- and therefore no more Vietnamization.
After the Gulf War of 1991, basking in the ostensible success of Operation Desert Storm, the officer corps persuaded itself that it had once and for all banished its Vietnam-induced bad memories. As Commander-in-Chief George H.W. Bush so memorably put it, “By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.”
In short, the Pentagon now had war figured out. Victory had become a foregone conclusion. As it happened, this self-congratulatory evaluation left U.S. troops ill-prepared for the difficulties awaiting them after 9/11 when interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq departed from the expected script, which posited short wars by a force beyond compare ending in decisive victories. What the troops got were two very long wars with no decision whatsoever. It was Vietnam on a smaller scale all over again -- times two.
Vietnamization 2.0
For Bush in Iraq and Obama after a brief, half-hearted flirtation with counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, opting for a variant of Vietnamization proved to be a no-brainer. Doing so offered the prospect of an escape from all complexities. True enough, Plan A -- we export freedom and democracy -- had fallen short. But Plan B -- they (with our help) restore some semblance of stability -- could enable Washington to salvage at least partial success in both places.  With the bar suitably lowered, a version of “Mission Accomplished” might still be within reach.
If Plan A had looked to U.S. troops to vanquish their adversaries outright, Plan B focused on prepping besieged allies to take over the fight. Winning outright was no longer the aim -- given the inability of U.S. forces to do so, this was self-evidently not in the cards -- but holding the enemy at bay was.
Although allied with the United States, only in the loosest sense did either Iraq or Afghanistan qualify as a nation-state. Only nominally and intermittently did governments in Baghdad and Kabul exercise a writ of authority commanding respect from the people known as Iraqis and Afghans. Yet in the Washington of George Bush and Barack Obama, a willing suspension of disbelief became the basis for policy. In distant lands where the concept of nationhood barely existed, the Pentagon set out to create a full-fledged national security apparatus capable of defending that aspiration as if it represented reality. From day one, this was a faith-based undertaking.
As with any Pentagon project undertaken on a crash basis, this one consumed resources on a gargantuan scale -- $25 billion in Iraq and an even more staggering $65 billion in Afghanistan. “Standing up” the requisite forces involved the transfer of vast quantities of equipment and the creation of elaborate U.S. training missions. Iraqi and Afghan forces acquired all the paraphernalia of modern war -- attack aircraft or helicopters, artillery and armored vehicles, night vision devices and drones. Needless to say, stateside defense contractors lined up in droves to cash in.
Based on their performance, the security forces on which the Pentagon has lavished years of attention remain visibly not up to the job. Meanwhile, ISIS warriors, without the benefit of expensive third-party mentoring, appear plenty willing to fight and die for their cause. Ditto Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. The beneficiaries of U.S. assistance? Not so much. Based on partial but considerable returns, Vietnamization 2.0 seems to be following an eerily familiar trajectory that should remind anyone of Vietnamization 1.0. Meanwhile, the questions that ought to have been addressed back when our South Vietnamese ally went down to defeat have returned with a vengeance.
The most important of those questions challenges the assumption that has informed U.S. policy in the Greater Middle East since the freedom agenda went south: that Washington has a particular knack for organizing, training, equipping, and motivating foreign armies. Based on the evidence piling up before our eyes, that assumption appears largely false. On this score, retired Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, a former military commander and U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, has rendered an authoritative judgment. “Our track record at building [foreign] security forces over the past 15 years is miserable,” he recently told the New York Times.  Just so.
Fighting the Wrong War
Some might argue that trying harder, investing more billions, sending yet more equipment for perhaps another 15 years will produce more favorable results. But this is akin to believing that, given sufficient time, the fruits of capitalism will ultimately trickle down to benefit the least among us or that the march of technology holds the key to maximizing human happiness. You can believe it if you want, but it’s a mug’s game.
Indeed, the United States would be better served if policymakers abandoned the pretense that the Pentagon possesses any gift whatsoever for “standing up” foreign military forces. Prudence might actually counsel that Washington assume instead, when it comes to organizing, training, equipping, and motivating foreign armies, that the United States is essentially clueless.
Exceptions may exist.  For example, U.S. efforts have probably helped boost the fighting power of the Kurdish peshmerga. Yet such exceptions are rare enough to prove the rule. Keep in mind that before American trainers and equipment ever showed up, Iraq’s Kurds already possessed the essential attributes of nationhood. Unlike Afghans and Iraqis, Kurds do not require tutoring in the imperative of collective self-defense.
What are the policy implications of giving up the illusion that the Pentagon knows how to build foreign armies? The largest is this: subletting war no longer figures as a plausible alternative to waging it directly. So where U.S. interests require that fighting be done, like it or not, we’re going to have to do that fighting ourselves. By extension, in circumstances where U.S. forces are demonstrably incapable of winning or where Americans balk at any further expenditure of American blood -- today in the Greater Middle East both of these conditions apply -- then perhaps we shouldn’t be there. To pretend otherwise is to throw good money after bad or, as a famous American general once put it, to wage (even if indirectly) “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy." This we have been doing now for several decades across much of the Islamic world.
In American politics, we await the officeholder or candidate willing to state the obvious and confront its implications.
Andrew J. Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the author of Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country, among other works. His new book, America’s War for the Greater Middle East (Random House), is due out in April 2016.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turse’s Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

20 comments:

  1. Huma has, Drudge reports, finished personally inspecting the Las Vegas Senior Citizen's Presidential Debate Stage, and The Hillary Podium, and finds all acceptable.

    I am certain we will hear all about the subjects of this thread in tonight's o'erwhelming debate.

    Other topics will include who can and how best to milk the 'rich' and give free shit to everybody.

    I have decided to nap through it and rely on Quirk's reportage.....



    ReplyDelete
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    1. PODESTA WARNS BIDEN: MAKE UP YOUR MIND...
      DNC WAR OF WORDS ERUPTS...
      POLL: MOST VOTERS NOT AWARE IT'S ON...
      ANDERSON COOPER: I'M NOT PART OF CLINTON WORLD...
      HUMA INSPECTS THE STAGE...
      Arrives in Kate Middleton's dress!..................Drudge

      Delete
  2. Any Democrat other than Hillary Clinton is fine with me. They all had a good opening statement. Bernie Sanders would be preferable to any Republican.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. POLL: MOST VOTERS NOT AWARE IT'S ON...



      That's me. I didn't realize it had started.

      later

      Delete
  3. Hillary Clinton belongs in the Republican Party.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hillary Clinton belongs in prison.

      Let her run for office from there.

      Delete
  4. So tensed up over The Big Senior Citizens debate I couldn't nap.

    Expectantly awaiting The Quirk Report, if there is one.

    In fact, the average age of Sanders, Clinton, and Biden — the only three Democrats with a chance of winning a single state next year — is a breezy 71. Ronald Reagan, the oldest president in U.S. history at the time of his first inauguration, wasn’t quite 70 when he was sworn in. If you want to see in vivid detail just how fresh and new the Party of Youth and Diversity looks these days, tune in and watch these five albino dinosaurs swinging their tails at each other for two hours to decide who’s the real socialist and who’s just a pretender.

    http://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/13/open-thread-senior-citizens-set-for-evening-of-fun-in-las-vegas/

    "Five albino dinosaurs" is good.....

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Where was The Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Dem Debate held ?

      Circus, Circus ?

      Delete
    2. Five of God's own prototypes, never even considered for mass production.....

      Delete
  5. Bernie Sanders suits me just fine.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. The Bodhisattvas weep, and look down in Divine Compassion.

      On a practical level, just get it over with now, give your all to the poor, take up the begging bow, and, stark naked, head for the forest.....

      Delete
  6. MEET THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

    This House Republican majority has experienced a lot of weirdness in recent years. One lawmaker was caught sending shirtless photos to people on Craigslist during a legislative retreat. Another threatened to throw a reporter off a balcony — then landed in prison on an unrelated matter. Earlier this year, one of the party’s rising stars redecorated his office in the style of Downton Abbey, then resigned amid allegations he was padding his expense account.

    But these past few weeks might be the strangest stretch of all for the House GOP.

    Their leader, Speaker John Boehner, resigned a day after he sobbed before Pope Francis.

    Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the affable Californian who was the favorite for Boehner's job, said the committee the party created to investigate the Benghazi attacks was meant to help sink Hillary Clinton's presidential chances. After a week of campaigning, McCarthy ditched his bid rather than face down the same band of right-wing lawmakers that drove Boehner out. Then Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) saw fit to go before 100 of her House Republican colleagues in a closed meeting and allude to rumors she was having an affair with McCarthy. They both say those claims are false.

    Finally, to top it off, the man whom party honchos are begging to run for one of the most powerful jobs in Washington — 45-year-old Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin — wants none of it. Ryan’s spokesman, Brendan Buck, spends most of his time these days telling reporters the 2012 vice presidential candidate simply isn’t interested but appreciates the sentiment. When Ryan escaped Congress for a weeklong recess, all he told reporters was that he was looking forward to the Green Bay Packers beating the St. Louis Rams this weekend.


    Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/house-republicans-strange-times-214619#ixzz3oVR8mc9K

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    1. .

      I'm sure IBD or the Weekly Standard could come up with a similar list for the Dems.

      They are all dicks.

      .

      Delete
  7. The Democrats cleared outclassed the Republican debate on any rational basis. I doubt that Biden will feel inspired to get into this campaign.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Bernie Sanders is first class, he is smart, serious, thoughtful and has a great message. He has my vote.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Deuce, a honest question.

      You have made no secret of your wealth, your world traveling and your being part of the upper 1/2 of 1 percent, you do release that your wealth is going to be redistributed by someone like Sanders. How does that make you feel?

      And if you have no issues in giving up your white privilege and wealth why have you not already put your money where your mouth is and donate most of your wealth to the poor and needy (or un-needy).

      How many hospitals have you financed in Gaza or the West Bank?

      Delete
  9. Let me tell you something about the wealthy. They love their money. They are undertaxed and if they are taxed more, they will work more to get the pile higher.

    A common sense tax rise is removing the social security cap.

    Too much money is pissed away on the military and the war machine.

    US public infrastructure is embarrassing and surtaxes on the wealthy going to restoration of the infrastructure is fine with me.

    The American workers have been screwed by trade deals and the top 1% have made a fortune from it. A surtax on incomes over one million dollars is fine with me.

    I would eliminate charitable deductions. Charity is a virtue and virtue is reward enough. Why should I or anyone else subsidize your charitable donations that are tax deductible?

    I resent financing Israeli aggression that destroys hospitals in Gaza or the West Bank.

    I also favor a tax on US media to finance elections. Most political spending gets spent on advertising, so a tax there is just. I would totally eliminate any private financing of elections. It only leads to corruption.

    I don’t care who is a Jew or not. That is your game. I despise killers.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hillary and Bernie put on a hell of a show. It was a wonderful debate - Purely issues-centric.

    I'll take either one. :)

    ReplyDelete