Back in April, I provided some testimony on the future of warfare to the House Armed Services committee. One of the questions I got from a Congressman was: what should our strategy be in Afghanistan? I responded with something that made everyone, particularly the Congressmen in the room, uncomfortable. Essentially, what I proposed was this:
Aghanistan is a hollow state — it has international recognition (and the trappings of a nation-state including five star hotels in the capital for journalists and diplomats), but it retains little control over the countryside. Further, the state lacks legitimacy. All legitimacy is local/tribal/gang. So, let’s skip to the end game in Afghanistan and run this war through “nominally loyalist” tribal militias (loyal to US money and support rather than to the Afghan government). Let’s not waste time on building up the Afghan military, trying to make the Afghan government legitimate, or on reconstruction efforts.
This wasn’t a strategy for “victory” (in the sense of the maximal goals required: a legitimate democracy that is integrated into the global economy), it was a strategy of “good enough” (a defensive delay). The strategy above allows the US to maintain a level of controlled chaos in Afghanistan, enough to allow an exit. It doesn’t waste the lives of US soldiers and our increasingly scarce financial resources on a maximal effort that can’t be won. It’s also a strategy that comes straight out of Brave New War (the strategy, re: Sons of Iraq, that was eventually used in Iraq to create controlled chaos sufficient for an exit, is too).
