Back on the main topic of the day: As usual, George Friedman of STRATFOR takes a different perspective – broader, longer-term, less politicized around current issues and personalities – than almost anyone else does (at least in public). His conclusion:
Every war has its center of gravity, and Obama has made clear that the center of gravity of this war will be the Afghan military’s ability to replace the Americans in a very few years. If that is the center of gravity, and if maintaining security against Taliban penetration is impossible, then the single most important enabler to Obama’s strategy would seem to be the ability to make the Taliban transparent.
Therefore, Pakistan is important not only as the Cambodia of this war, the place where insurgents go to regroup and resupply, but also as a key element of the solution to the intelligence war. It is all about Pakistan. And that makes Obama’s plan difficult to execute. It is far easier to write these words than to execute a plan based on them. But to the extent Obama is serious about the Afghan army taking over, he and his team have had to think about how to do this.
The last sentence is a bit weak, I concede, but the piece is still worth reading in its entirety, not least for its historical digression on Vietnamization, why in Friedman’s intelligence-centric view it failed, and what the Obama team will have to do differently to improve on that performance.
Comments 46
CKM, The Endgame to the Vietnam War was a cynical tactic called “Decent Interval”* devised by Kissinger,there was the appearance of an effort to accomplish Vietnamization,but it was a cloak for the real process of winding down the war to affect a politically acceptable process. The Leftists said “Declare Victory and come home” Isn’t this Obama’s Decent Interval on the WOT?
*Frank Snepp’s Book
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I haven’t read Snepp’s book, but, regardless of Kissinger’s, or Nixon’s, or Kissinger and Nixon’s actual or supposed intentions, there is a wide divergence of views about what really happened, whether the war was winnable or whether S Vietnam would have been able to defend itself with US help.
I suppose this could turn into Obama’s decent interval – or that his policy puts him in a position to escape full blame for eventual failure. That seems to be a major element of Peters’ scathing piece today, which you’ve probably already caught (if not, it’s at http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/setting_up_our_military_to_fail_lBlTIHm69SM02Lly5JbNaO ). But I think it would be easy to overdo historical analogies.
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:42 pm
CKM,Whatever the case,if Patraeus and Mcrystal don’t believe in this plan,they better go public immediately.
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:47 pm
They have gone public – defending it. It’s now their job to substitute their wills for whatever is lacking from the CinC. I don’t believe they’d be on board if they didn’t think that they could implement the plan successfully, including whatever July 2011 contingencies may be overhanging their efforts – or at least that, on balance, trying to make this work was better than resigning and all that it would entail.
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:55 pm
“trying to make this work”
If it can’t work,they should resign. They don’t need absolute certitude of victory,just a reasonable chance,however,if there’s no chance of victory (Ala Howard Portnoy),they need to come clean immediately.
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:01 pm
In a way, the generals don’t have the luxury to adopt a binary “win-lose” framework. Maybe winning or losing is something for historians to disagree about 100 years from now. The generals have to compare the ranges of probable outcomes for saluting and doing their best vs quitting to make a point.
Quitting to make a point would carry with it a huge load of certain negatives – not least for the forces they command now, but would leave exposed. In short, it would be a catastrophe, which the Obami also know, and which has all along meant that the only scenarios where Obama rejected McChrystal-Petraeus were ones requiring you to think of Obama as a political kamikaze or super-saboteur. By the same token, however, the Obami knew that they could undershoot and play to their base to a very great extent before the generals would push the panic button on them.
So we got a kind of classic American political-military negotiation, kind of a two-way political-strategic price discovery that I would think most generals are very familiar with by the time they ascend to the top ranks.
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:13 pm
“So we got a kind of classic American political-military negotiation, kind of a two-way political-strategic price discovery that I would think most generals are very familiar with by the time they ascend to the top ranks”
I agree:I am very familiar with this process as it operated in Korea,Vietnam,and the WOT so far. This classic cluster,career first thinking has to go,the sooner the better.
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
You guys are very smart.
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:35 pm
The Black Knight wrote:
You guys are very smart
Hi, BK, I’m the smart one,but nobody’s a better debator than CKM,he’s a slippery one.
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:47 pm
@ Rex Caruthers:
LOL – I just have to say on behalf of the generals that they might look at the negotiation as unsentimental realism – maturity – part of their job description. Dropping bombs on the American political system isn’t supposed to be, except in extremis.
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:52 pm
CK MacLeod wrote:
@ Rex Caruthers:
LOL – I just have to say on behalf of the generals that they might look at the negotiation as unsentimental realism – maturity – part of their job description. Dropping bombs on the American political system isn’t supposed to be, except in extremis
Two Words:Douglas Macarthur
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:58 pm
If Petraus retired instead of resigned a year or two from now and spent some time writing and lecturing, I think he might make a winning Presidential or VP candidate.
December 2nd, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Not two of my favorite words.
December 2nd, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Perhaps I’m too cynical; but it’s possible the generals expect failure but are going along because they see a low probability chance of success which they intend to explore fast.
If that attempt fails they have the president locked into a time frame during which they can do an orderly withdrawal. And the threat from a Taliban controlled Afghanistan will have been put off for a few more years.
December 2nd, 2009 at 3:40 pm
@ Sully:
Or perhaps they’re not really good generals at all and they want to fail.
Maybe they never believed in the plan that they drew up.
It all could be a trick.
December 2nd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Sully wrote:
Perhaps I’m too cynical
Take off your Rose Colored Glasses,Congress may defeat funding for the Surge;Obama & congress may have made a deal.
December 2nd, 2009 at 3:53 pm
I doubt that very strongly – it would be a total political collapse for Obama.
@ Sully:
You don’t have to take as pessimistic a view and still see that as a reasonable worst-case trade-off for the generals to accept.
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:06 pm
@ fuster:
You can repeat that this is the generals’ plan from now until July of 2011 and that will not make it true.
There is simply no way the generals drew up a plan which included a public stated withdrawal date because they know from Napoleon that ‘the moral is to the physical as three to one.’
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:07 pm
@ Sully: You can keep repeating that there is public withdrawal date, but you’ll have a heck of a time pinning it down.
One of the things about Obama that offers little endearment is his very careful, doubly and triply conditioned phrasing.
There is no
withdrawal date out in public.
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:27 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
I’m struggling against the urge to go far over into speculation in theorizing on this CK.
One thing, which you alluded to before is that Petraeus and McCrystal don’t want to abandon their troops in what will be a difficult time. It is only a little step farther to think they don’t want to abandon their army during what will be a very morale testing time.
The next three or eight years promise to be ones of great trial for the professional military. Officers, of necessity, must convey respect for the CINC, and they must carry out his orders. But it is the enlisted whose very lives are on the line.
Afghanistan isn’t Vietnam; but neither was Vietnam earlier on what it became for the army in the late sixties. Schwartskopf and other then young officers made a career of repairing the damage from that.
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:30 pm
@ fuster:
For God’s sake fuster. I heard the man state the withdrawal date and so did the rest of the world and the army. No amount of spin or obfuscation can repair that statement.
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:32 pm
@ Sully:Read the text of the statement.
He announced July 2011 as the start of withdrawal, conditioned on two, three, or more things.
Read it. If he said anything like we’re actually leaving in July or shortly thereafter, I’ll be happy to agree with you.
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:40 pm
December 2, 2009 6:08 PM
White House: July 2011 Is Locked In for Afghanistan Withdrawal
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:53 pm
That noted, it’s pretty late in the day to take any commitment from BHO as firm – whether chiseled, filled in with lead, sealed in titanium, buried a mile deep…
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:03 pm
And it may not be a withdrawal withdrawal.
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:07 pm
@ CK MacLeod: Some troops at no defined rate.
Can you say when our numbers over there will revert to what they currently are?
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:11 pm
It may be more of a change of position.
They might be pointed to another wholly lawless region.
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Of course not. If they bring one guy home for an emergency hangnailectomy, he’ll have fulfilled his promise. Except Jones, Clinton, and others are now going around trying to explain why it makes sense in terms of focusing the minds of the Afghans. So apparently it’s locked in stone that they’re going to start picking up the marbles by July 2011. Beyond that, everyone can believe whatever in their minds makes Barack look best.
As for the Afghans according to the theory – familiar from Democratic anti-surge rhetoric of ’06-’08 – the question is on what it focuses their minds – getting with the program or preparing their exits.
The other question is whether any of us are in a position to assess any of it realistically. The optimistic gloss is that it’s all actually pretty darn doable with a little force and a lot of money, and everything else is just stage management. I don’t believe it, but I have no way to prove it.
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:38 pm
@ fuster:
Even for you this is unbelievable.
It doesn’t matter what the text says. It doesn’t even matter what the detailed parsing of his actual words on video yields. What matters is the message that was received live and in person by the average GI Joe and Taliban Tariq from the Commander in Chief making a formal speech.
He said that he would begin to withdraw troops as of a date.
If he gets up tomorrow in front of congress and TV cameras and says that he only meant ten soldiers in July of 2011 and ten soldiers each eighteen months after that he would still not repair the damage. All he would do is confirm that he was either clueless or purposely deceptive when he got up there and gave the speech.
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Add to that to do this on the 10thcommemoration of 9/11, specially if the terrorism trials are starting around the same time. It is a downright irresponsible plan
December 3rd, 2009 at 6:08 am
Actually the generals – I think it was Petraeus -were saying that the president’s July date was not fixed and the white house came out with the link CK referenced to. The beginning of the withdrawal is a fixed date – July 2011.
Now he might change his mind, he might eventually say something else, it might be a headfake to the Taliban. I don’t know.
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:28 am
Here’s a couple of minutes from Anthony Cordesman about the Afghanistan build up.
http://themediavore.com/mediavore/2009/12/02/anthony-cordesman-on-afghanistan/
He’s worth a listen because he was one of the senior advisors for McChrystal’s report.
December 4th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
@ fuster:
I was impressed with the smooth way Cordesman dodged the withdrawal date question. Very slick, almost Clintonesque. The man is well suited to serve as a spinmeister. Did you see him catch the sardine his trainer tossed him just before the video ended.
I was less impressed with his grasp of the plain facts. He distinctly said additional 30,000 troops two or three times. And I know that can’t be correct because you’ve been telling me and Howard and others over and over again that President Obama laid out a much larger increase.
You need to get that classified information you have about the trainers and the furrin troops to Cordesman so he won’t continue embarrassing himself. Perhaps his teleprompter hasn’t been updated.
December 4th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Cordesman is a respected professional doing no doubt very fine work, as he has been for a generation at least, meaning that he has never been innovative and prescient enough, or flagrantly wrong enough, to attract much attention. He’s sort of the anti-Luttwak of veteran defense intellectuals. (Luttwak is or was – don’t hear from him much anymore – more creative, but his best-known prediction as I recall was of massive casualties for US and coalition forces in the Gulf War.)
Here’s a link to his report on the surge written just after Bush’s speech announcing it in January 2007. He rated the chances of success as “less than even” over the long term, but his analysis of risks and obstacles helped fuel opposition to the plan. In fact, I found the link in an old blog post from Commonweal on “Bush’s absurd surge.”
http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/070116_cordesman_bush_plan.pdf
If he’s played a large role in assessing and developing this plan, that doesn’t give me greater confidence in it, except to the extent that McChrystal (and others) may have appreciated having ideas tested and shaken down by an in-house pessimist/skeptic – who has no doubt informed himself in great detail on why the Iraq surge exceeded his expectations.
December 5th, 2009 at 12:33 am
@ Sully:
You probably http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jcvyk85-txa-h8FQq9am834aJLnwD9CCP8UG0
missed it somehow.
December 5th, 2009 at 5:12 am
@ CK MacLeod:
Here’s Gates dropping the other shoe in the fourth (?) paragraph.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125992554118976499.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
December 5th, 2009 at 5:32 am
I appreciate what you’re saying CK. I was only commenting on Cordesman’s performance in that particular video – and tweaking fuster, of course, an avocation which has added a certain zest to my life these past couple of months.
Which brings me to a question. Are you the former lester, fuster?
December 5th, 2009 at 7:37 am
Now there’s tweaking, and then there’s insulting.
Our cluck is no lester.
Or, as lester would have said, with his usual brevity and in his typical lowercase: lol
December 5th, 2009 at 8:11 am
@ Sully:
Actually, Sully, that’s a question best directed at Peter. He’s the only person ever caught in the act of lester impersonating.
Additionally, lester was appearing at deadContentions prior to my ever having read the thing.
December 5th, 2009 at 9:39 am
After having said that. I’ll now await hearing that yes, there are going to be 40,000.
( Howard is , of course, exempted on grounds of exhaustion )
Then you can get back to assailing the stupidity, ignorance, irresponsibility, and probable cowardice of the mention of withdrawal.
December 5th, 2009 at 9:43 am
I could remind you that you are sometimes known to pull a disappearing act when similarly cornered; but instead I will graciously yield that there will be a total of 40,000 troops for the one year before withdrawal starts, assuming one counts unionized European truffle snuffers at stated numerical value.
That 40,000 number, however, arose after President Obama’s 30,000 was digested by the various spinners and had started to cause problems with his plan to put the onus on the generals at the least possible cost to his reputation as the world’s greatest peacemaker since Ghandhi with the left and the Nobel committee.
As to the lester question I don’t remember lester being as bad as CK apparently remembers him. I was only going to contentions regularly for a relatively short time as well.
December 5th, 2009 at 10:30 am
lester was an isolationist twerp with evident antisemitic tendencies and very poor manners. The best I can say for him is that he wasn’t quite as far gone as some of the ghastlier sometime regulars at Contentions.
December 5th, 2009 at 10:40 am
@ Sully:
That was fair enough and I’ll remember to match up when I find it appropriate.
The truth about the 40,000 is that it was agreed upon several weeks ago. It was also agreed that the international federation of trufflists was important and will become more important.
The generals, the DoD, and the WH were never far apart on the US sending troops.
The number was always 34,000.
It’s reduced by a thousand or so because we seem to have pulled more Europeans than expected. ( There might even be more coming from France and/or Germany ).
December 5th, 2009 at 10:55 am
I remember the occasional pretty straightforward anti-semitic post at contentions but mostly as drive by sorts of things, whereas when lester was there he never let a post go unanswered.
December 5th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Never noticed lester being as much anti-Semitic as ignorantly nativist and indifferent to Israeli interests.
Of course at deadCintentions not being a Zionist was sure proof of anti-Semitism.
December 5th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
lester qualified as objectively antisemitic, IMO – it wasn’t just that he was anti-Zioinist as opposed to being non-Zionist, or even that he embraced classic anti-semitic stances (Buchananite on WW2, apologist for blatant Jew-haters in the Middle East), but that he compulsively left stupidly smart-alecky and insulting posts on every post at the leading Jewish conservative blog in the universe. Anyway, enough of lester.
December 5th, 2009 at 3:45 pm