Flash! Obama declares COIN dead - Again.

 
“Over the last decade, we have spent $1 trillion on war, at a time of rising debt and hard economic times,” he said in a 13-minute address that sounded at times like a campaign speech. “America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home.” Barack Obama

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-to-order-home-10000-troops-from-afghanistan-officials-say/2011/06/22/AGUuRCgH_story.html

-------------------------------------- 

"the reason why I don’t think we can win with a counterinsurgency strategy, is in fact because I think that, three or four years down the pike, if we apply that strategy, all you good people, and your fellow citizens across the country are going to look at this, going to say, are the Taliban, or whatever it is we’re calling the Taliban, are they really our enemies, in the sense that al-Qaeda was? Is this really what we want to do? And when that happens, I suspect that what’s going to happen is you’re going to tell your members of Congress that you’ve had enough of this, and then they will vote the end of the war as they did in Vietnam."  W. Patrick Lang at the IQ2 debate on Afghanistan policy, 6 October, 2009.

"...time to focus on nation-building here at home.”

With those words, President Obama turned America's back on the failed NEOCOIN dreams of the last decade.  As I said in New York City eighteen months ago, COIN is too hard, too expensive and takes too long to be a fruitful method of warfare unless the counterinsurgents either own the land and people fought for or hope to do so.

COIN was resurrected as a doctrine to fill a vacuum in operational method.  The post Vietnam US armed forces turned away from the possibility of fighting wars in which the populace itself was the terrain of battle.  Iraq and the proliferation of insurgencies there in rection to our occupation caused consternation among those senior officers who had never bothered to think about anything that was not in a "popular" field manual.  In the first years in Iraq there was a great confusion of "frameworks" and paradigms for thinking.  The first "model" adopted for everyday use was that of "urban combat."  It was reasoned that in towns there were a lot of civilians around that must be dealt with, so this "new" type of war must be like whatever had been planned when fighting in cities.  This kind of thought was encouraged by Rumsfeld's insistence that what had been encountered was not "insurgency," but rather remnants of "former regime forces," "deadenders," etc.  Rumsfeld had some dim idea of what real insurgency would imply in terms of the difficulties to be encountered. 

Eventually, the fatuous nature of attempts to view what was happening in Iraq as "urban combat" was evident and the collection of little books that had been written about COIN in the '90s came to the fore as sources of wisdom.  The rest is history.  It will take a while for the essential uselessness of COIN as a doctrine to "percolate" through the "planning, programming and budgeting" cycle.  How long"  Five years maybe?  Even more seriously, the deformation in military educaation of a generation of officers who have learned to think of themselves as apostles of armed nation building will be difficult to overcome.

The US is a global power.  It is impossible to predict what kind of wars the US might be forced into.  Balanced forces (air, sea, ground) with multi-faceted capabilities are needed, not a COIN oriented constabulary.  pl 

 

Comments

[zanzibar]

Pat

You continue to be proven right but I wonder if that provides any satisfaction considering that both the country and the military have paid a significant price in our decade long wars in Asia.

I truly hope that we can focus "on nation-building here at home" at least for the next couple decades. A more isolationist foreign policy actually suits me fine. Re-building our industrial base and raising median wages and getting our people back to productive work with a 21st century infrastructure is the best we can do for our grandchildren. We will then be ready for more disastrous military adventures in distant lands.

[VietnamVet]

Colonel,

I want to personally thank you and Brigadier Ali for your concise and knowledgeable observations on the situation in Afghanistan.

I’ve never reconciled the death and maiming of young men I once knew for no good reason. To replay the tragedy all over again in my lifetime is still unbelievable. I know it is not the men and women in the military; you went much higher in the chain of command than I ever did. I guess it was not high enough for your good advice to prevent a repeat, all over again.

Once the troops are back home, the stab in the back attacks will start. I just don’t know what will happen when some of the thousands of left behind contractors are captured and killed; probably ignored, like the contractors killed and wounded since security and the supply system was privatized.

[arbogast]

Mullen should be removed. This is astonishing. He undercuts the President!

MacArthur must be dancing in his grave.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/world/asia/24petraeus.html?hp

What makes him think he can get away with this?

[arbogast]

This is the money Mullen quote:

"No commander ever wants to sacrifice fighting power in the middle of a war. And no decision to demand that sacrifice is ever without risk."

The middle of a war? Since when do "wars" last 20 years? "Sacrifice"? If you're a single soldier in the furthest poorly manned outpost in the most forgotten war on earth, you're making the same sacrifice as anyone else being shot at.

Mullen, needless to say, is not being shot at.

Why aren't the American people furiously angry? What planet are they on? Don't they realize they are being robbed, murdered and lied to by a gang of common criminals?

[walrus]

Mullen just delivered the first chorus of the new Neocon song book.

"“The president’s decisions are more aggressive and incur more risk than I was originally prepared to accept,” Admiral Mullen said.

“More force for more time is, without doubt, the safer course,” he added. “But that does not necessarily make it the best course. Only the president, in the end, can really determine the acceptable level of risk we must take. I believe he has done so.”

....and the family of the next soldier who dies will blame the President for increasing risks by reducing troop numbers.

Admiral Mullen said the goal of the internal policy debate “was preserving the success our troops and their civilian counterparts have achieved thus far,” "

..And when the so called "success" evaporates like the morning dew in the Sun, the new dolchstosslegende is born.

[Norbert M Salamon]

Colonel:

I appriciate your analysis both here and on SQ2 [which I heard upon posting; your abillity as a Nostradamus is evident 2 years later.]

I do have a small disagreement with you, Sir, regarding:

"The US is a global power. It is impossible to predict what kind of wars the US might be forced into. Balanced forces (air, sea, ground) with multi-faceted capabilities are needed, not a COIN oriented constabulary".

From my recollection of history since the Korean War [I do not know how it started, I was but a child] I do not think that there were any wars where the USA was attacked though it attacked numerous weak nations, thus the USA was never forced into wars since 1953 - excluding hubris about national interest. [Afganhistan is questionable, for it appears that Mr. Bush could have achieved bin laden's placement into a third country for judicial action. Mr. Bush wanted war, for which your nation paid a horrendoiud price in the last 10 years].

I admit that the USA should have the military capability to defend herself, however, such has to be within affordable financial terms, and definetaely does not need the 1000 or so foreign military postings nor the 1000-s of nuclear weapons of various sizes - the latter has a maintainance cost of 14 billion + per annum at a time when 42 million are on food vouchers, indicating a totla misallocation of scarce tax dollars..

[Patrick Lang]

NMS

Yes, but you Canadians have had a long run sheltered behind our aggressiveness. Your expenditure of GDP on defense is 1.14%. Parasites. Do you still have an army? Do you still want our protection or are the actors at Ft. Henry and the Houses of Parliament good enough? Take your token forces and go home! It is a long time since my uncle served in the Canadian Black Watch in WW1. pl

[Matthew]

Mullen is retiring. He needs a job, doesn't he? Time to French kiss the MIC.

BTW, MacArthur got fired. And Truman got re-elected (or "elected" for you purists).

There is a lesson there.

[Matthew]

Addendum: Truman was reelected before he fired MacArthur. My post makes it seem that Truman fired MacArthur before the election. My point is: Truman knew who was C-in-C and his reputation has grown over the years.

[Neil Richardson]

I think there's some misunderstanding here regarding Mullen's comments. I wanted Obama to retire Mullen, McChrystal and Petraeus after the details of the policy deliberation on the Afghan surge became known. Based on leaked accounts they rigged the war games that were used to evaluate the two primary options.

However, there's nothing in his comments before the House ASC that constitute anything remotely close to what MacArthur had done. Mullen was asked for a professional assessment and gave a frank answer just as Shinseki had done in 2003. I think he's wrong, but he ought to have the right to disagree with the commander-in-chief provided it doesn't violate Article 88. For those who are old enough to remember, MG Singlaub and General Vessey essentially had said the same thing. However the difference was Singlaub's words bordered on insubordination.
Obama had a chance to send a proper message to the senior officer corps a year ago, but he chose not to do so. Lute and Cartwright gave their honest assessments. I felt Obama should've rewarded them (and the comments of Mullen dressing down Lute were reported verbatim). Of course like many politicians, Obama doesn't seem to understand that for effective leadership, loyalty from the top down is just as important as that from the bottom to the top. I hope LTG Lute fares better than Cartwright for the sake of the Army.

[Neil Richardson]

Dear Col. Lang:

"It will take a while for the essential uselessness of COIN as a doctrine to "percolate" through the "planning, programming and budgeting" cycle. How long" Five years maybe? Even more seriously, the deformation in military education of a generation of officers who have learned to think of themselves as apostles of armed nation building will be difficult to overcome."

IMHO I think this applies to the Army unfortunately, but I'm not sure if the same is true for the Air Force and the Navy. At least in terms of doctrine, they are trying to replicate the success of AirLand Battle with the AirSea Battle concept. We'll just have to see if the Navy has another Mitscher or Miles Browning left in them as they try to transition.

For all the whinings about the big bad Yankee imperialism, you sometimes have to shake your head when reading this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-warns-us-in-island-dispute/2011/06/22/AGTiVxfH_story.html

“The situation is shaky out there,” del Rosario said. He said he is asking the Obama administration to “clarify” the territory covered by the two countries’ 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty and to “provide us with the capacity” to better patrol the Spratlys and “establish a clear presence in the area.” He said the United States should be concerned about any “threat to maritime safety and freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea.

Perhaps for many Filipinos today, Subic Bay and Clark weren't such eyesores after all. People should be careful what they wish for.

[Grimgrin]

PL: True, but we can either be parasites or we can start building nuclear weapons. There's pretty much nothing else that offers any hope of protecting such a huge landmass with such a small population, all of it close to the US border.

I doubt if an independent Canadian nuclear force would be acceptable to the US, though.

[arbogast]

What is this complete BS of Congress asking the opinion of people like Mullen and Crocker on completely arbitrary and affirmative policies of the President?

What about my opinion? Why don't they want to have my opinion? Because I'm not an expert?

The experts give their opinions to the President and he makes the decisions. Then they shut up.

For a President who makes George Bush look like Mary Poppins when it comes to plugging leaks, Obama seems ready to tolerate, in his typical lordotic fashion, outright treachery by his employees.

Or maybe the AIPAC crowd was so incensed that Obama would draw down the number of American shleppers in their part of the world, that they are able to make an ass of him. Check out the Washington Post editorial for the AIPAC reaction.

I don't know. Increasingly, I don't want to know.

[optimax]

We can threaten China with bankruptcy. We can give them one month, that is if Treasury drains my pension.

[William R. Cumming]

The most direct way to attack a National Security State that develops and feeds its own but not the Nation is to attack its secrecy that largely protects waste, fraud, abuse, and stupidity. Given unwillingness of the National Security State to reform itself and therefore protect the Nation, the only way open is to starve the beast. DEMOBILIZATION in a complex world has its dangers but failure to do so is more dangerous.
Once again the USA should only support and assist Nation-states that promote the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution, however imperfectly, [as does the US polity], and women's rights to equality.
The polity of the USA must accept the fact that the USA is turning brown, black, and yellow (actually white when most of Asia is considered). We are still the luckiest country but the continued corruption is now overwhelming almost everything as economic desperation drives more and more in to trying to satisfy Mazlov's Hierarchies of NEED!

[Patrick Lang]

Grimgrin

Go ahead. Build nuclear weapons. We "tolerate" them quite well among the British and French. You plan to defend Canada with nuclear weapons? Against whom, us? What a joke! pl

[Farmer Don]

Col Lang,
You seem to be in a foul mood!
Mr Salamon makes two points: one extreme, "I do not think that there were any wars where the USA was attacked though it attacked numerous weak nations,", and one you may well agree with, "I admit that the USA should have the military capability to defend herself, however, such has to be within affordable financial terms"

Now unless you two are in some private feud, the first point could be easily refuted, and the second is common sense, a country makes a choices between guns or butter. What are you so hot about?

Now you make the point: "Your expenditure of GDP on defense is 1.14%. Parasites"
I see that being true during the cold war. But the cold war is over, the US won. Right now, how are we being parasites? Who is planning to invade the US or Canada?
Farmer Don.
PS tried to see if your number of 1.14% for the defence budget was correct. All I could find was 7.9% of the federal budget goes to "Protection of persons and property".

[YT]

"Why aren't the American people furiously angry? What planet are they on? Don't they realize they are being robbed, murdered and lied to by a gang of common criminals?"

arbogast,

Unfortunately, apathy is the norm.The sheeple (a.k.a. lemmings) are content with their diet of reality TV 24/7, X-Box games & pornography.

After all, if they haven't any kin or friend in the U.S. Armed Forces...

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents, by Edmund Burke

[Patrick Lang]

farmer don

You did not look very hard. I direct your attention to Table Three in the following NATO document.

http://www.nato.int/nato_static/assets/pdf/pdf_2011_03/20110309_PR_CP_2011_027.pdf

This table shows Canada's % of GDP spent on defense in 2010 as 1.5% The US expenditure in the same year is 5.0%.

I have asked someone to work up an expansion of Gates' remarks on NATO as an alliance in the 21st Century. I will not say more until I see that article.

Nevertheless, since your armed forces have little capability, why have them at all?

Costa Rica gets on well without armed forces and you would still have the RCMP and the Coast Guard. pl

[Grimgrin]

PL: Well America is the only power that could conceivably invade in the next 50 years or so, and as you've rightly pointed out, we'd be easy meat. We might be able to turn ourselves into Switzerland, but geography is against us.

And you're right, my nuke suggestion is a joke, since it'd be a deterrent not a defense, and for a deterrent to be credible it requires the will to use it if invaded. If it ever comes down to it, it'd just be Anschluss possibly, with a small insurgency in Quebec if you changed the language laws.

As for spending, our military now is more or less what yours was pre WW 2 I think, a small cadre designed to preserve skills and traditions in order to allow for mobilization in the event of a real war and to conduct limited operations abroad. What level of spending do you think is appropriate for such a force?

[Patrick Lang]

grimgrin

You are at that level now, just don't expect anyone serious to think of it as a combat force. pl

[jerseycityjoan]

Funny with all the talk of debt ceilings and trillion dollar budget cutting that Obama mentions "nation-building here at home."

Are we willing, really, to do that? In my opinion, that would require us to increase taxes, eliminate tax breaks and put an end to the 7%-8%-9% annual increases in US health care costs.

In addition, we will have to reevaluate and reduce our foreign obligations.

These are all things that should be done, but will we? There are many unpopular actions to take that the rich and protected won't like. Or are we going to just yammer on and rearrange deck chairs on our Titantic?

Oh yeah, somewhere in there, if anybody in Washington has a second, they should give a thought to putting the unemployed back to work, and not at minimum wage jobs.

[Ken Hoop]

Gareth Porter seems to believe Obama's Afghan policy has some shuck and jive in it.

http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2011/06/23/obama-leaves-door-open-to-long-term-us-afghan-combat/

[Patrick Lang]

Ken Hoop

You say that "you don't buy" my number of ten to twenty thousand people in central asia to have an effective CT strategy." How are you qualified to judge? pl

[Medicine Man]

I'm perplexed that anyone who has followed Col. Lang on SST for any length of time could be mystified by our host's supposed "foul mood" in this thread.

For the record: Offering up biased, reductionist opinions about US military history/military posture from a foreign perspective is something that will get your ass chewed on SST. This shouldn't be mysterious at all to anyone who has been lurking here regularly and paying attention. Good Lord...