Afghanistan: The Fog at the End of the Tunnel

Carl Conetta, 19 June 2021 Full text: HTML  PDF (updated)

What is causing the uncertainty about when US ground forces will exit Afghanistan. The Biden administration insists that logistical factors explain its breach of the 2020 US-Taliban agreement, which reset the exit date from May to September. Logistical factors are also supposed to explain why the date may now be walked back to July. Actually, logistical issues explain neither. Using current data and historical precedent, this short analysis shows why.

An alternative explanation for the delay is that it gave Washington more time to pursue some of its unfinished goals regarding Afghanistan. In this, the lingering troop presence serves as leverage. What goals? Improve Kabul’s military posture, polish plans and preparations for US forces to “fight from afar,” and pursue dramatic new international initiatives aiming to lock the Taliban into a cease-fire, peace settlement, and government reform plan substantially defined by the USA. This high risk-gambit won’t succeed, but it might prolong the conflict and America’s involvement in it.

They made a desolation and called it “A Good War”

By Carl Conetta, Reset Defense Blog post, 04 February 2021
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This short article (with extensive bibliography) surveys at the 20-year mark the consequences of the US regime change, occupation, and nation-building exercise in Afghanistan. Drawing on US DOD and congressional research agency reports, media investigations, and NGO analyses it anchors the broad public impression of full-spectrum failure. It reviews the human and financial costs of the war, the failures of reconstruction, and the ongoing dysfunction of Afghan governance.

America’s debacle in Afghanistan, which echoes the Soviet failure during the 1980s, indicates that nations are not the type of thing that can be built according to a foreign blueprint, and especially not at the point of a gun. Outsiders lack the knowledge, indigenous roots, legitimacy, and degree of interest to prevail. Indeed, their very presence is provocative, especially given differences of language, religion, and culture.

Why is withdrawal so difficult? The article concludes that domestic political and institutional considerations are more important than any strategic rationale or cost-benefit analysis. Once committed, no political or military leader, nor the Pentagon cares to own responsibility for failure. And hubris generates an endless succession of imagined “new paths” to success. But as success proves forever elusive, so does withdrawal. In a perverse sense, it is persistent failure that keeps America mired for decades in this and other desultory wars.

Principles for Building Confidence and Stability into National Defenses and International Security – toward sufficient, affordable, robust, and reliable defense postures

by Charles Knight, 01 February 2021.
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Adapted from Carl Conetta, Charles Knight, and Lutz Unterseher, Building Confidence into the Security of Southern Africa, PDA Briefing Report #7. Commonwealth Institute, 1996. https://comw.org/pda/sa-fin5.htm (accessed 17 January 2021)

 

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By bringing military structures into line with defensive political goals, the non-provocation standard facilitates the emergence of trusting, cooperative, peaceful political relations among nations. In contrast, any doctrine and force posture oriented to project power into other countries is provocative — unless reliably restrained by political and organizational structures.

Don’t Buy a Cold War with China: It’s a Bad Deal!

by Charles Knight, 31 January 2021.
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South China Sea

“It will not be an easy task to create a structure for peaceful relations with China. We must privilege cooperation, always seeking to identify common security interests. This task will require imagination, persistence, and focused attention. Nations wise enough to opt-out of a cold war with China will emerge as winners, while those that sign on to the struggle will reap decline and perhaps the whirlwind of war.”

Korea versus Korea: Conventional Military Balance and the Path to Disarmament

by Charles Knight and Lutz Unterseher, Lit Verlag, Munster, Germany, April 2020.
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The chapter by Charles Knight, A Path to Reductions of Conventional Forces on the Korean Peninsula is available here in PDF.

 

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“Varied incremental steps that embody and signal the accumulating commitment to a minimally acceptable common political future for Korea are key to this process. Progressive reduction of cross-border invasion threats through mutual confidence building force restructuring will constitute a virtuous circle of reinforcement for a changed relationship. [Through the] accumulation of the sunk costs of iterative reciprocity North and South Korea will arrive at a point where the demonstrated commitment to smaller restructured military postures is sufficient to allow rapid progress toward a stable level and disposition of arms compatible with a new peaceful political relationship.” ~ Knight
“Die Konfrontation auf der Halbinsel, mit offensivir Oreintierung und Bereitschaft zur Praemption, impliziert Stabilitatsrisiken. Diese werden noch erhoht durch Entwicklung und Einfuhrung prazier ballistischer Raketen, welche die Illusion nahren, den Gegner im Konfilktfall ‘enthaupten’ zu konnen.” ~ Unterseher

Why Security Guarantees Are the Key to Solving the North Korean Nuclear Crisis

by Henri Féron and Charles Knight, The National Interest, 27 June 2019.   PDF  |  HTML

 

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“[In order to initiate a process of reciprocal iterative conventional forces reductions] South Korea might announce that it would put into reserve status a few thousand of its Marines and then look for a reciprocating move by the North. It is not important that the move is of like kind. It could consist, say, in the standing down of a class of missiles or artillery. The point is that the move should signal something of value which can then be read to encourage another move by the other side.”

Sustainable Defense: More Security, Less Spending

Final Report of the Sustainable Defense Task Force of The Center for International Policy, June 2019.   PDF

Carl Conetta contributed analysis of the economic and climate change challenges, details of the threat assessment, the strategy, and the calculation of savings from recommended changes to force structure.

 

Sustainable Defense

“The United States must partner with other nations in addressing challenges like climate change, epidemics of disease, nuclear proliferation, and human rights and humanitarian crises. None of these challenges are best dealt with by military force. Rather, they will depend on building non-military capacities for diplomacy, economic assistance, and scientific and cultural cooperation and exchange which have been allowed to languish in an era in which the military has been treated as the primary tool of U.S. security policy.”

 

The Inter-Korean Summit Declaration of April 27, 2018: a review in detail

by Charles Knight, Project on Defense Alternatives, 01 May 2018. PDF

 

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“The April 27, 2018 Inter-Korean Summit was a visibly cordial, even happy, event. At its conclusion, North and South Korea released a Declaration of Peace, Prosperity, and Unification. This paper reviews a selection of key sections and phrases in ‘The Declaration’ with attention to understanding their implications for the goal declared by both parties of ending ‘division and confrontation’ on the peninsula and for addressing the overhanging issue of denuclearization. Notably, both parties strongly assert their rights as Koreans to take leadership in this task.”

8 Key findings regarding the Korea nuclear arms crisis from recent discussions with experts in China, Russia and Korea

by Charles Knight, Center for International Policy, 02 February 2018. PDF

Tumen River

“Most interlocutors thought that there is almost no chance that the presently stringent sanctions can force the DPRK to agree to disarm. The Chinese and the Russians generally believe that the maximal concession that sanctions can win from the DPRK is an agreement to freeze their warhead and missile development — particularly inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) development — in return for some combination of confidence-building measures, security guarantees, and progress toward political normalization. The North Koreans will not give up the nuclear weapons they already have… at least not until there is a permanent peace on the peninsula and the US is no longer understood to be an enemy.”

Not a common global home, but a fine mess

Presentation by Carl Conetta on the “World Security Situation – Russia, Iraq and Syria, and Beyond” panel of the Economists for Peace and Security (EPS) symposium in Washington, DC, 17 November 2014. The panel included Richard Kaufman, Bill Hartung, and Heather Hurlburt.
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Something in the Air: ‘Isolationism,’ Defense Spending, and the US Public Mood

(printable PDF full version) (printable PDF executive summary) (HTML full version) (HTML executive summary) by Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives, Center for International Policy, 14 October 2014.

 
Something in the Air Is “neo-isolationism” captivating the American public? Or is interventionism back? Will the public continue to support reductions in defense spending?
 
The report offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of current and historical US public opinion polls on global engagement, military intervention, and defense spending. Significant fluctuation in public sentiments is evident. So is an enduring divide between elite opinion and the general public. The report assesses these in light of changes in US policy, strategic conditions, and the economy. It also examines the effect of partisan political dynamics on public debate and opinion. Seven tables and graphs.

The US “Asia Pivot” and “Air-Sea Battle” Concept: Toward Conflict with China?

(HTML version) (PDF version) by Carl Conetta. Originally published as “Will the QDR Pivot for Air-Sea Battle with China?” in Reset Defense Bulletin, 03 March 2014.
Asia Pivot

Will China come to pose a peer military threat to the United States?  The Obama administration’s 2012 Strategic Defense Review and the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) turn on this eventuality. Both the so-called “Asia pivot” and the evolving Air-Sea Battle (ASB) operational concept are meant to preclude it. But they may serve to precipitate it, instead.

Reasonable Defense: A Sustainable Approach to Securing the Nation

(printable PDF version) (summary) (appendix of tables and charts) by Carl Conetta, PDA Briefing Report #21, 14 November 2012.  Argues for a new balance among the various instruments of  national power reflecting today’s strategic conditions.  Taking a realistic view of security needs, the report advocates a military 20% smaller than today’s.   It advances a “discriminate defense” strategy that would focus the military on cost-effective missions and save $550 billion more than official plans over the next decade.   Main report includes 9 tables.  Appendix has 18 additional tables and charts addressing personnel, force structure, and budgets.

The Dynamics of Defense Budget Growth, 1998-2011

(printable PDF version) by Carl Conetta, Prepared for “Economics and Security: Resourcing National Priorities,” a workshop sponsored by the William B. Ruger Chair of National Security Economics, Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, May 2010. This article also is a chapter in Richmond M. Lloyd, ed, Economics and Security: Resourcing National Priorities (Newport RI: Naval War College, 2010).

The Near Enemy and the Far: The Long War, China, and the 2006 US Quadrennial Defense Review

by Carl Conetta, 01 November 2006.  HTML  |  PDF

 

The 2006 US Quadrennial Defense Review advanced two new strategic vectors for the US armed forces – one targeted a putative “global Islamic insurgency,” the other put America on a collision course with China.

An edited version of this analysis appeared in the July 2006 issue of the World Policy Journal with the title Dissuading China and Fighting the ‘Long War’ (PDF).

 

Dissuading China and Fighting the ‘Long War’

(printable PDF version) by Carl Conetta, World Policy Journal, 01 July 2006. The 2006 US Defense Review advanced two new strategic vectors for the US armed forces – one targets a putative “global Islamic insurgency”; the other puts America on a collison course with China. (A longer version of this article was published in November 2006 under the title The Near Enemy and the Far: The Long War, China, and the 2006 US Quadrennial Defense Review.)

We Can See Clearly Now: The Limits of Foresight in the pre-World War II Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)

(printable PDF version) (HTML version) by Carl Conetta, PDA Research Monograph #12, 02 March 2006. “Military transformation” and the idea of a “Revolution in Military Affairs” are prominent themes in US defense planning. However, the example of revolutionary change during the Second World War suggests that forecasting such revolutions poses a daunting, if not insurmountable challenge.

Disappearing the Dead: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a “New Warfare”

by Carl Conetta, PDA Research Monograph #9, 18 February 2004.
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Examines the Pentagon’s treatment of the civilian casualty issue in the Iraq and Afghan wars, reviews the “spin” and “news frames” used by defense officials to shape the public debate over casualties, and critiques the concept of a “precision warfare” as misleading.  Case studies include the Baghdad bombing campaign. An appendix provides a comprehensive Guide to Surveys and Reporting on Casualties in the Afghan and Iraq Wars.
Collateral in Iraq

Dueling with Uncertainty: the New Logic of American Military Planning

(HTML version) (PDF version) by Carl Conetta and Charles Knight, February 1998. Examines how the new planning concepts and methods adopted by the Pentagon since 1992 have led to military requirements disproportionate to real threats and have supported overweening ambitions for the application of military power. A version appeared in the March/April 1998 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as “Inventing Threats.”

Defensive Military Structures in Action: Historical Examples

by Carl Conetta, Charles Knight, and Lutz Unterseher, May 1994.
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Examines three major cases in the last 80 years where defensive preparations, structures, and tactics were of decisive importance in major military operations. Originally published in Confidence-Building Defense: A Comprehensive Approach to Security & Stability in the New Era, Study Group on Alternative Security Policy and Project on Defense Alternatives, 1994.

Winter War Finland

Toward Defensive Restructuring in the Middle East

by Carl Conetta, Charles Knight, and Lutz Unterseher, PDA Research Monograph #1, February 1991.
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Examines the character of force structure and military conflict in the Middle East and outlines a nonoffensive defense posture for nations in the region. It also draws the implications of such a posture for arms transfers and arms control policy. An appendix reviews the pertinent lessons of the 1990-91 Gulf War.

An edited version of this article appeared in the 01 April 1991 issue of The Bulletin of Peace Proposals (now Security Dialogue).