Afghanistan War

Afghanistan: What Just Happened? What Comes Next?

Can the United States escape the vortex of its 20-year war?

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by Carl Conetta, 09 Sept 2021.

This article assesses the calamitous end of America’s 20-year war and the effort of US interventionists to use public distress about the airport chaos to blunt and distract from an adequate appraisal of the war that produced it.

The war was defined from the start by an impossible mission shrouded in misinformation. Intelligence agencies failed to give useful intelligence over a span of not just 4 months, but 20 years. And the article asks, Can we escape the political and strategic dynamics that produce and sustain such wars?

It concludes by examining how some Western powers are now looking to continue the conflict via other means. Against this, the author proposes a stability-oriented approach that would energetically explore areas of possible US-Taliban cooperation, a new positive context in which areas of difference might be productively addressed.

Afghanistan: The Fog at the End of the Tunnel

 

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by Carl Conetta, 19 June 2021

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 were also used to explain why the date may be moved 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”

 

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By Carl Conetta, Reset Defense Blog, 04 February 2021.

This 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 in 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.

Michèle Flournoy reveals why US troops may stay in Afghanistan – indefinitely

by Carl Conetta, Reset Defense Blog, 3 December 2020

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“Ending Our Endless War in Afghanistan,” USIP panel w/ Michèle Flournoy & Stephen Hadley. 18 Feb 2020

Commentary on “Ending Our Endless War in Afghanistan: Washington Perspectives on a US-Taliban Agreement” – A US Institute of Peace panel w/ Michèle Flournoy and Stephen Hadley, February 18, 2020

Afghan Army Now Ready … to lose to the Taliban

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by Charles Knight, Lobe Log, 19 September 2015.

A review of the well-informed and insightful study by M. Chris Mason, The Strategic Lessons Unlearned from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan: Why the Afghan National Security Forces will not hold, and the implications for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, June 2015.

The most serious deficit of the Afghan National Security Forces…is its lack of motivation in comparison to the Taliban. One of the primary lessons unlearned from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan is that soldiers in the armies we create, train, and equip are simply not willing to fight and die for weak, corrupt, illegitimate governments.
~ M. Chris Mason

Helicopters in America’s post-9/11 wars

Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives, Sep 2008   HTML |  PDF

This article is a chapter in Lutz Unterseher, Military Intervention and Common Sense: Focus on Land Forces (Berlin-Greifswald: Ryckschau, 2008.)

Drawing on the experiences of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the article assesses the role played by helicopters, reviewing their strengths and limits. The author suggests that a dilemma shadows the use of these aircraft. On the one hand, they offer a unique combination of mobility, flexibility, and agility in working closely with ground forces, providing reconnaissance, fire, maneuver, and logistical support. However, helicopters prove acutely sensitive to environmental conditions, are relatively fragile, and can be countered by multiple, relatively-inexpensive weapon systems.

These problems can be partially mitigated, but only in ways that substantially increase costs while narrowing the scope of the crafts’ usability. This has undercut notions of using helicopters in deep attack roles and large-scale helicopter assaults.

The article concludes by examining cost-effective roles for helicopters in combat. And it asks, Do tilt-rotor aircraft offer a viable alternative?

 

Symposium: The Role of Force & the Armed Forces in US Foreign Policy — What have we learned?

Security Policy Working Group, 10 April 2008.

  • Andrew Bacevich, “The Origins and Demise of the Bush Doctrine of Preventive War”
  • Carl Conetta, “Out from the House of War: A Litmus for New Leadership in Security Policy” (printable .pdf)
  • David Gold, “How Much Defense Can We Afford? (printable .pdf), as republished in Challenge (Sept/Oct 2008)

Military Intervention and Common Sense: Focus on Land Forces

by Lutz Unterseher, Berlin-Greifswald: Ryckschau, 2008. Foreward by Charles Knight. Includes a chapter by Carl Conetta, Helicopters in the US wars since 9/11.   PDF  |  order paperback

book cover

[from the Foreward]
“This book…makes a major contribution to undoing the confusion for one class of increasingly likely 21st Century uses of military force. That is, internationally sanctioned military intervention using greater force than traditional peace-keeping and less than ‘war-fighting’.”

Fighting on Borrowed Time: The Effect on US Military Readiness of America’s post-9/11 Wars

(printable PDF version) (HTML version) by Carl Conetta, PDA Briefing Report #19, 11 September 2006. To sustain today’s wars, the Bush administration has adopted a policy of “risk displacement”. High optempo is maintained in Iraq and Afghanistan at the expense of readiness elsewhere and for other missions. The policy also saps future readiness. It may take the US military half a decade to recover.

Pyrrhus on the Potomac: How America’s post-9/11 wars have undermined US national security

(printable PDF version) (HTML version) by Carl Conetta, PDA Briefing Report #18, 05 September 2006.  A net assessment of America’s post-911 security policy shows it to be “pyrrhic” in character: although progress has been made in disrupting Al Qaeda, the broader effect has been to increase the threat to the United States, while weakening the nation’s capacity to respond effectively.

Agonizing Issue: is torture ever justified in military interrogations of terror suspects?

(HTML version) (printable PDF version) interview with Charles Knight, co-director, Project on Defense Alternatives and Alfred P. Rubin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of International Law, The Fletcher School, Tufts University, transcript edited by Jim Cronin, The Boston Globe Magazine, 30 January 2005.  The United States is now training hundreds, maybe thousands, of new interrogators.  Abusive relationships traumatize both the victim and the abuser. We are training and having our own people experience this abuse, and they will be returning home to our communities. We know from studies of domestic abuse that this abusive pattern can be replicated through generations.

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

by Carl Conetta, PDA Research Monograph #9, 18 February 2004.  ➪ PDF ➪ summary PDF  ➪ HTML  ➪ summary HTML

 

Collateral in Iraq
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.

The Pentagon’s New Budget, New Strategy, and New War

(HTML version) by Carl Conetta. PDA Briefing Report #12, 25 June 2002. Examines the new US military strategy as codified in the September 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review and practiced in the Afghan war. The report contrasts the new QDR with its 1997 predecessor, paying special attention to the Bush administration’s “new concept of deterrence.” Published in Hegemonie oder Stabilität: Alternativen zur Militarisierung der Politik, edited by Volker Kröning (MdB), Lutz Unterseher, and Günter Verheugen (Hrsg.) Bremen: Edition Temmen, August 2002.

Dislocating Alcyoneus: How to combat al-Qaeda and the new terrorism

(HTML version) (PDF version) by Carl Conetta. PDA Briefing Memo #23, 25 June 2002. The memo outlines a “strategy of dislocation” for defeating the new terrorism. Al Qaeda is analyzed as a “distributed transnational network” that uses terrorism in order to catalyze political-cultural polarization and mobilization. Published in Hegemonie oder Stabilität: Alternativen zur Militarisierung der Politik, edited by Volker Kröning (MdB), Lutz Unterseher, and Günter Verheugen (Hrsg.) Bremen: Edition Temmen, August 2002.

Strange Victory: A critical appraisal of Operation Enduring Freedom and the Afghanistan war

(printable PDF version) (HTML version) (summary) by Carl Conetta, PDA Research Monograph #6, 30 January 2002. Why the inadvertent effects of the war are now overtaking the intended ones. Includes appendices addressing: the war’s impact on the humanitarian crisis; the missing political framework for American action; the source of power and the strategy of the Taliban; and the limits of the Bonn agreement and the challenges facing the interim government.

Operation Enduring Freedom: Why a Higher Rate of Civilian Bombing Casualties

(HTML version) by Carl Conetta, PDA Briefing Report #13, 18 January 2002. Examines the extent and causes of civilian bombing casualties in the Afghanistan war and explores why the civilian casualties were higher than in the Serbia/Kosovo campaign despite fewer bombs dropped. Includes appendices: estimation of civilian bombing casualties: method and sources; resolving discrepancies in casualty accounts.

Beyond bin Laden: The Temptations of a Wider War

(HTML version) by Carl Conetta, PDA Briefing Memo #22, 28 September 2001. Offering a review of US military options in response to 11 September, this article rejects large-scale attacks on Afghanistan due to their likely negative impact on regional stability and international cooperation. As an alternative it proposes smaller-scale military operations against the bin Laden network combined with multinational law enforcement activities worldwide.

What Justifies Military Intervention?

(HTML version) commentary by Charles Knight, 27 September 2001. Examines the problems for international security associated with U.S. military intervention abroad. Includes a Postscript on the “war on terrorism” (revised 01 March 2002) and Selected Readings on the doctrines of Just War, Total War, and Strategic Bombing (revised 01 March 2002).

Rotocraft for War: Descending on a Military Dilemma

(HTML version) by Dr. Lutz Unterseher, PDA Briefing Memo #19, May 2001. Offers a critical assessment of the value of combat helicopters in modern war with examination of the technical characteristics and limits of combat helicopters, the doctrine for their use, and issues of cost. Case studies include the Gulf War, Vietnam, and Afghanistan.