The expectation that civilians should be protected from the worst excesses of war is traditionally viewed as a moral or legal restraint, moderating the kind of violence that can be inflicted on the battlefield. But the shift towards counterinsurgency in Afghanistan...
This is a follow-up to my earlier post, “Why Foreign Intervention in Nigeria is a Bad Idea.” That post focused on larger issues that make Nigeria a particularly problematic context for foreign...
This is the first of two posts about Boko Haram & possible US involvement in Nigerian counterterrorism operations. For the second, see "What is to be done in Nigeria?". Note: two sentences added...
Happy New Year to all. While you’re sticking the bubbly in the fridge and mapping out 2013 resolutions, consider nominating your favorite blogs for the 2013 OAIS awards sponsored by the Duck. ...
How is it that time and time again we are persuaded to hang on for another year in Afghanistan with the mantra that counterinsurgency (a.k.a. COIN) will really work this time. While I certainly acknowledge the limited range of alternative options and oppose any peace agreement with the Taliban, I think that putting our faith in COIN time and time again is problematic... To understand why, perhaps a (not so brief) recap of how the discourse of COIN has mutated in Afghanistan would be helpful...From late 2003 to mid 2004, Robert Andrews, a CIA and DoD official and Donald Rumsfeld's head of...
He's not alone, of course, but scholar Gilles Dorronsoro is quite pessimistic about the Afghan surge and ongoing counterinsurgency campaign:The current counterinsurgency campaign shows little signs of accomplishing its mission. The surge is not enough to reverse the Taliban’s gains, or the quick decline of the Karzai government. Pakistan’s lack of support makes the Taliban sanctuary there a major strategic problem.More troops and the latest strategy have failed to make progress. The war is not conclusive in the south — where stabilization could take years—and the Taliban is gaining momentum...
Recently, while discussing the war in Afghanistan with a conflict studies program in the mid-west, I had a rather odd debate with a leftist professor who was devil's advocating what he claimed was a "neo-conservative" position (based on some of his recent interaction with naval officers and RAND researchers).His main argument revived the "stabbed in the back" hypothesis from the Vietnam era. The argument essentially posits that counter-insurgency is a cumulative body of knowledge first pioneered by the Britons. According to this position, Americans have been remarkably successful at applying...
I have alluded to the work of Jason Lyall on the use of indiscriminate violence in counterinsurgency in the past. Briefly, Lyall's paper (recently published in JCR) examines how the Russian army used targeted and non-targeted shelling in Chechnya through a pseudo-natural experiment. The paper is fascinating, however, I always had two major issues with it; first, Lyall claims randomization and thus indiscriminate violence through the "harass and interdiction" pattern of shelling used by Russians. With even my limited exposure to US Army protocol, it is difficult to claim that this pattern is...
Last night, over a good meal, two Department colleagues and I talked with several out-of-town guests for quite some time about the prolonged war in Afghanistan. Eventually, I happened to make a point that a fellow blogger said seemed novel and interesting -- certainly worthy of a blog post.Let's see if anyone agrees.As many experts note, the war in Afghanistan is prolonged in large part because too much of the local population sees the U.S.-NATO intervention as illegitimate. Regardless of good intentions, Americans are seen as unwanted foreign invaders. Moreover, even U.S. Generals concede...
It seems the CIA has a new wrinkle to its counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan--bribing warlords for support with little blue pills. Viagra has become the latest weapon in the war on terror. (I'm struggling mightily to avoid the obvious low-brow humor here, but I'll probably succumb somewhere below the fold... Seriously, you couldn't make this stuff up.)From today's Washington Post:The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer,...
Wednesday, in Slate, Phillip Carter looked at what he called the first post-surge offensive by the U.S. military. Roughly 10% of American forces in Iraq are conducting operations in the the Diyala province. However, as Carter cautions, this is "an attempt to clear an area without there being a sizable number of troops available to occupy it afterward."Carter documents that this is a sizable offensive force -- bigger even than what the US employed in November 2004 during the second assault on Fallujah. Unfortunately, the size of the force will not guarantee mission success: One truism about...
If the US is going to win hearts and minds in Iraq, then it needs to avoid killing innocent civilians. So why are air bombings up fourfold in Iraq this year? Max Bergmann of Democracy Arsenal explores this question.Eric Martin of American Footprints has a strong post on the (un)likelihood of Iran passing nuclear weapons along to terrorists. Moreover, if terrorists were serious about acquiring a bomb, wouldn't they try harder to get them from former Soviet sources? Despite new revelations about Syria's "cleanup job," Jeffrey Lewis over at Arms Control Wonk remains skeptical that Syria had a...